invitation to come again whenever he
liked; but he was morbidly afraid of being in the way, so waited for a
formal invitation. Naturally enough it never came, for with numbers of
friends of their own the Nixons did not think of the lonely, silent boy
whose claim upon their hospitality was so small. So on Sundays he got up
late and took a walk along the tow-path. At Barnes the river is muddy,
dingy, and tidal; it has neither the graceful charm of the Thames above
the locks nor the romance of the crowded stream below London Bridge. In
the afternoon he walked about the common; and that is gray and dingy too;
it is neither country nor town; the gorse is stunted; and all about is the
litter of civilisation. He went to a play every Saturday night and stood
cheerfully for an hour or more at the gallery-door. It was not worth while
to go back to Barnes for the interval between the closing of the Museum
and his meal in an A. B. C. shop, and the time hung heavily on his hands.
He strolled up Bond Street or through the Burlington Arcade, and when he
was tired went and sat down in the Park or in wet weather in the public
library in St. Martin's Lane. He looked at the people walking about and
envied them because they had friends; sometimes his envy turned to hatred
because they were happy and he was miserable. He had never imagined that
it was possible to be so lonely in a great city. Sometimes when he was
standing at the gallery-door the man next to him would attempt a
conversation; but Philip had the country boy's suspicion of strangers and
answered in such a way as to prevent any further acquaintance. After the
play was over, obliged to keep to himself all he thought about it, he
hurried across the bridge to Waterloo. When he got back to his rooms, in
which for economy no fire had been lit, his heart sank. It was horribly
cheerless. He began to loathe his lodgings and the long solitary evenings
he spent in them. Sometimes he felt so lonely that he could not read, and
then he sat looking into the fire hour after hour in bitter wretchedness.

He had spent three months in London now, and except for that one Sunday at
Hampstead had never talked to anyone but his fellow-clerks. One evening
Watson asked him to dinner at a restaurant and they went to a music-hall
together; but he felt shy and uncomfortable. Watson talked all the time of
things he did not care about, and while he looked upon Watson as a
Philistine he could not help admiri