sh or
hardware shop, would come out a man in a dirty apron to take the sun and
contemplate the scene, not finding in it, seemingly, anything that in
any way depressed his spirit. Amongst the constant, crawling, shifting
stream of passengers were seen women carrying food wrapped up in
newspaper, or with bundles beneath their shawls. The faces of these
women were generally either very red and coarse or of a sort of
bluish-white; they wore the expression of such as know themselves to be
existing in the way that Providence has arranged they should exist. No
surprise, revolt, dismay, or shame was ever to be seen on those faces;
in place of these emotions a drab and brutish acquiescence or mechanical
coarse jocularity. To pass like this about their business was their
occupation each morning of the year; it was needful to accept it. Not
having any hope of ever, being different, not being able to imagine any
other life, they were not so wasteful of their strength as to attempt
either to hope or to imagine. Here and there, too, very slowly passed
old men and women, crawling along, like winter bees who, in some strange
and evil moment, had forgotten to die in the sunlight of their toil,
and, too old to be of use, had been chivied forth from their hive to
perish slowly in the cold twilight of their days.

Down the centre of the street Thyme saw a brewer's dray creeping its way
due south under the sun. Three horses drew it, with braided tails and
beribboned manes, the brass glittering on their harness. High up, like
a god, sat the drayman, his little slits of eyes above huge red cheeks
fixed immovably on his horses' crests. Behind him, with slow, unceasing
crunch, the dray rolled, piled up with hogsheads, whereon the drayman's
mate lay sleeping. Like the slumbrous image of some mighty unrelenting
Power, it passed, proud that its monstrous bulk contained all the joy
and blessing those shadows on the pavement had ever known.

The two young people emerged on to the high road running east and west.

"Cross here," said Martin, "and cut down into Kensington. Nothing more
of interest now till we get to Hound Street. Purceys and Purceys all
round about this part."

Thyme shook herself.

"O Martin, let's go down a road where there's some air. I feel so
dirty." She put her hand up to her chest.

"There's one here," said Martin.

They turned to the left into a road that had many trees. Now that she
could breathe and look about her, Th