Explore "An Awfully Big Adventure" by Bartimeus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In a ground floor room at the back of Portsmouth Hard an old woman was laying the table for supper. Not much of a supper: the remains of a loaf of bread, some dripping in a saucer. But the chief item of the meal, a bloater, lay on a plate in front of the fire, keeping warm.
An old man sat in a chair by the hearth, reading a newspaper through steel-rimmed glasses. Laying it aside, he leaned forward and prodded the bloater speculatively with a nubbly forefinger. He turned and looked at his wife over the top of the steel-rimmed spectacles.