Meanwhile he had put on his best, had blackened his shoes until they shone
like little mirrors, had brushed his bowler hat again and again and looked
finally like a sailor on shore for a holiday. Seven years in Charing Cross
Road had not taken the brown from his cheeks, nor bent his broad shoulders.
At the Mansion House he climbed on to the top of a lumbering omnibus and
sailed down through the City. It was now that he discovered how seldom
during his seven years he had ventured beyond his little square of country.
Below him, on either side of him, black swarms stirred and moved, now
forming ahead of him patterns, squares, circles, then suddenly rising
it appeared like insects and in a cloud surging against the high stone
buildings. All men--men moving with eyes straight ahead of them, bent
furiously upon some business, but assembling, retreating, advancing, it
seemed, by the order of some giant hand that in the air above them played a
game. Imagine that, in some moment of boredom, the Hand were to brush the
little pieces aside, were to close the board and put it away, then, with
what ignominy and feeble helplessness would these little black figures
topple clumsily into heaps.
Down through the midst of them the omnibus, like a man with an impediment
in his speech, surrounded by the chatter of cabs and carts and bicycles,
stammered its way.
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