At the end of the long free seat, beyond where they had been sitting,
was a strange, haggard-looking woman; a pair of cheap cotton gloves
showed her thin white wrists, and her black dress looked dusty and
draggled. She had a strange haunted look on her face, as if she had
left some tragedy behind her at home. Every time a carriage with
scarlet-liveried coachmen passed, she got up and stood on the seat.
Perhaps she had journeyed there to see the Queen. She looked cross and
disappointed each time she stepped down again. On the other side a
couple of girls were discussing those that passed in the carriages,
and speculating as to who they might be. It was interesting to follow
their surmises.

"I think that's Lady X.," one of them said, as a lady, driving a pair
of high-steppers, passed.

But it wasn't. The little fellow sitting beside her glowed with the
importance of proprietorship; but, smart little chap that he was in
Throgmorton Street, he had no idea how many understudies there were to
his part, and did not realise that there are syndicates outside those
of the City.

"What an awfully common-looking woman!" the other said, as an old lady
passed in her carriage behind a sleepy pair of horses, sleepily
driven, the fat pug dog at her feet suffering eclipse by the
jelly-shaking arc of her redundant figure. She happened not to be
common by any means, but one of the brightest and most good-natured
members of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in
England.

"My goodness, isn't that Lord Roberts?" said the other, as a pair of
chestnuts passed, with a rigid and angular lady in the carriage
sitting beside a red-faced, white-moustached little man with his nose
in the air.

It was not Lord Roberts. He really looked much too important for
"Bobs," although he was a military man in a sense, being colonel of a
Volunteer regiment.

And how nasally obviously numerous in the procession was the
proportion of Jews, and the Jewesses whose plumpness seemed the
retribution inflicted by prosperity.

As the smart carriages passed and the high-stepping horses, which were
indeed the exception, for the majority ambled along half somnolent
from careless coachmanship, one sought in vain for some idea of what
they were doing it all for. They did not seem to enjoy it. If they did
not enjoy it, why did they do it? The expression that was common and
universal to almost all was their seriousness. The Volunteer colonel
took himse