ter romance.

At the corner of the High Street he left the omnibus and stopped a
moment to chat with his tobacconist. His tobacconist was a stout man in
a white apron, who stood for ever behind a counter and sold tobacco to
the most respected residents of Putney. All his ideas were connected
either with tobacco or with Putney. A murder in the Strand to that
tobacconist was less than the breakdown of a motor bus opposite Putney
Station; and a change of government less than a change of programme at
the Putney Empire. A rather pessimistic tobacconist, not inclined to
believe in a First Cause, until one day a drunken man smashed Salmon and
Gluckstein's window down the High Street, whereupon his opinion of
Providence went up for several days! Priam enjoyed talking to him,
though the tobacconist was utterly impervious to ideas and never gave
out ideas. This morning the tobacconist was at his door. At the other
corner was the sturdy old woman whom Priam had observed from his window.
She sold flowers.

"Fine old woman, that!" said Priam heartily, after he and the
tobacconist had agreed upon the fact that it was a glorious morning.

"She used to be at the opposite corner by the station until last May but
one, when the police shifted her," said the tobacconist.

"Why did the police shift her?" asked Priam.

"I don't know as I can tell you," said the tobacconist. "But I remember
her this twelve year."

"I only noticed her this morning," said Priam. "I saw her from my
bedroom window, coming down the Werter Road. I said to myself, 'She's
the finest old woman I ever saw in my life!'"

"Did you now!" murmured the tobacconist. "She's rare and dirty."

"I like her to be dirty," said Priam stoutly. "She ought to be dirty.
She wouldn't be the same if she were clean."

"I don't hold with dirt," said the tobacconist calmly. "She'd be better
if she had a bath of a Saturday night like other folks."

"Well," said Priam, "I want an ounce of the usual."

"Thank _you_, sir," said the tobacconist, putting down three-halfpence
change out of sixpence as Priam thanked him for the packet.

Nothing whatever in such a dialogue! Yet Priam left the shop with a
distinct feeling that life was good. And he plunged into High Street,
lost himself in crowds of perambulators and nice womanly women who were
bustling honestly about in search of food or raiment. Many of them
carried little red books full of long lists of things which they and
their ad