Go back to your digs and write something--anything you
like--and send it along--leave me your address. Oh, ho! Bucket Lane--hard
up?"
"I'm all right, thank you."
"All right, I wasn't offering you charity--no need to put your pride up. I
shan't forget you ... but send me something."
The clouds had now enveloped the sun. As Peter, a little encouraged by this
last experience but tired with a dull, listless fatigue, crept into the
dark channels of Bucket Lane, the rain began to fall with heavy solemn
drops.
CHAPTER VII
DEVIL'S MARCH
I
There could be nothing odder than the picture that Brockett's and Bennett
Square presented from the vantage ground of Bucket Lane. How peaceful and
happy those evenings (once considered a little dreary perhaps and
monotonous) now seemed! Those mornings in the dusty bookshop, Mr. Zanti,
Herr Gottfried, Mrs. Brockett, then Brockett's with its strange
kind-hearted company--the dining-room, the marble pillars, the green
curtains--Norah Monogue!
Not only did it seem another lifetime when he had been there but also
inevitably, one was threatened with never getting back. Bucket Lane was
another world--from its grimy windows one looked upon every tragedy that
life had to offer. Into its back courts were born muddled indecent little
lives, there blindly to wallow until the earth called them back to itself
again.
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