to it....

Lucky George! to be so much missed.

This morning, when I saw Tony on the Front, he was more than a little
awkward; looked shyly at me, from under his peaked cap, as if to read
in my face what I thought of him. He had slept after all, and spoke of
the hot grog as a powerful, strange invention, new to him as a sleeping
draught. When, in talking, I said that I have only a back bedroom and a
fripperied sitting room, and that my old lodgings do not please me as
they used to, he clapped me on the shoulder with a jollity intended, I
think, to put last night out of my mind. "What a pity yu hadn't let we
know yu cuden't find lodgings to your liking. Us got a little room in
house where they sends people sometimes from the Alexandra Hotel when
they'm full up. My missis 'ould du anything to make 'ee comfor'able. Yu
an't never see'd her, have 'ee? Nice little wife, I got. Yu let us know
when yu be coming thees way again; that is, if yu don' mind coming wi'
the likes o' us. We won't disturb 'ee."

[Sidenote: _A NOISY PLACE_]

Good fellow! It was his thanks. However I shall be going home
to-morrow. Tony Widger lives, I believe, somewhere down the Gut, in
Under Town, a place they call the Seacombe slum. You can see a horde of
children pouring in and out of the Gut all day long, and in the evening
the wives stand at the seaward end of it, to gossip and await their
husbands. Noisy place....

II

SALISBURY,
_July_.

A card from Tony Widger:

Dear Sir in reply to your letter I have let to the hotel which is
full for the 28th july until the 6th Aus, but I have one little
room to the back but you did not say about the time it would take
you to walk down also John to Saltmeadow have let so you can have
that room if you can manage or you can see when you come down their
are a lot of People in Seacombe or you write and let me know and I
will see if I can get rooms for you if you tell me about the time
you will be hear from yours Truly Anthony Widger.

Risky; but never mind. There is always the sea. It is something to have
the certainty of a bed at the end of a long day's tramp. Besides, I
want to see Tony, and George too, if by chance he is at home. And there
may be a little fishing. And--

And stepping westward seems to be
A kind of _heavenly_ destiny.