The inferno continued around them,
the air grew thicker with smoke, a barrel-organ began to play at the door,
draughts and dominoes rattled against the long wooden tables....
Ah! this was, indeed, London.
Peter was so greatly moved that his hunger left him and it was with
difficulty that the meat-pie was finished.
IV
During the three days that followed Peter learnt a very great deal about
the bookshop. At night he still slept in Mr. Zanti's bedroom, but it was
only a temporary pitching of tents during these days whilst he was a
stranger and baffled by the noise and confusion.
Already his immediate surroundings had ceased to be a mystery. He had as
it were taken them to himself and seated himself in the midst of them with
surprising ease. Treliss, Scaw House, his father, had slipped back into an
unintelligible distance. He felt that they still mattered to him and that
the time would most certainly come when they would matter to him even more,
but they were not of immediate concern. The memory of his mother was closer
to him....
But in this discovery of London he was amazingly happy--happier than he had
ever been in all his life, and younger too. There were a great many things
that he wished to know, a great many questions that he wished to ask--but
for the moment he was content to rest and to grasp what he could see.
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