Sometimes again his face softens. "Anyhow, if I"m not to see her--she"s going to lend me books," he thinks, and gets such comfort as he can.
Then again; "Books! What"s books?" Once or twice triumphant memories of the earlier incidents nerve his face for a while. "I put the ky-bosh on HIS little game," he remarks. "I DID that," and one might even call him happy in these phases. And, by-the-bye, the machine, you notice, has been enamel-painted grey and carries a sonorous gong.
This figure pa.s.ses through Basingstoke and Bagshot, Staines, Hampton, and Richmond. At last, in Putney High Street, glowing with the warmth of an August sunset and with all the "prentice boys busy shutting up shop, and the work girls going home, and the shop folks peeping abroad, and the white "buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home to their dinners, we part from him. He is back. To-morrow, the early rising, the dusting, and drudgery, begin again--but with a difference, with wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires and ambitions replacing those discrepant dreams.
He turns out of the High Street at the corner, dismounts with a sigh, and pushes his machine through the gates of the Antrobus stable yard, as the apprentice with the high collar holds them open. There are words of greeting. "South Coast," you hear; and "splendid weather--splendid." He sighs. "Yes--swapped him off for a couple of sovs. It"s a juiced good machine."
The gate closes upon him with a slam, and he vanishes from our ken.