CHAPTER IV
LONDON AT LEISURE
I was talking some time ago to a timekeeper in one of the 'bus yards in the west of London. In a sort of very clean square of stables horses stood patiently in couples with their traces hooked over their backs, the chains jingling a little, and yardmen with their braces about their loins bent over pails of water into which they stirred a powder of coarse oatmeal. A big man in painfully clean-washed corduroys came furtively and hesitatingly under the square entrance arch. His eyes wandered round, resting with a look of acquaintance and friendship upon the small litters of straw that lay outside each of the house doors. He began fumbling in an inner pocket painfully for his testimonials, his "character." The timekeeper said, "No, mate, no job here," and the man, after staring again at the straw, turned away without a word spoken, painfully shy, tired, and mutely disappointed, slowly as if he had all the time of the world upon his
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