Read "To London Town" by Arthur Morrison online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
MR. DUNKIN'S notice to quit arrived early the next morning. The service of that notice was a duty he owed to society, morality, conscience, virtue, propriety, religion, and several other things, which he enumerated without hesitation. He could not have sat in his pew the next day with any comfort, knowing that such a duty remained unperformed; he would have felt a hypocrite.
The notice might have come before, for the trade had been good and steady; but Mr. Dunkin also had heard the whispers that the ship-yard might be shut, and he had hesitated long. Now, however, there was no alternative -- if Mrs. May were left to flaunt her infamy the trade must decline under the scandal, and the place fall worthless again. More, her expulsion at this time would seem less a seizure of the new branch than a popular vindication of righteousness.