The streets opened and shut, shouts came up to them and
fell away. Peter's heart danced--London was here at last and the silence of
Bennett Square, the dark omens of Bucket Lane and the clamour of the city
had together been the key for the unlocking of its gates.
Ludgate Hill caught them into its heart, held them for an instant, and then
flung them down in the confusion of Fleet Street.
Here it was at last then with its typewriters and its telephones and its
printing machines hurling with a whir and clatter the news of the world
into the air, and above it brooding, like an immense brain--the God of its
restless activity--the Dome of St. Paul's.
Peter climbed down from his omnibus because he saw on his right a Public
Reading Room. Here in tattered and anxious company, he studied the papers
and took down addresses in a note book. He was frightened for an instant by
the feet that shuffled up and down the floor from paper to paper. There was
something most hopeless in the sound of that shuffle.
"'Ave yer a cigarette on yer, Mister, that yer wouldn't mind--"
He turned round and at once, like blows, two fierce gaunt eyes struck him
in the face. Two eyes staring from some dirty brown pieces of cloth on end,
it seemed, by reason of their own pathetic striving for notice, rather than
because of any life inside them.
Peter murmured something and hurried away.
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