On such rare
afternoons the ugliest of cities becomes
the most poetic, and months of sodden days
are offset by a moment of miracle.
"It's like that with us Londoners, too,"
Hilda was saying. "Everything is awfully
grim and cheerless, our weather and our
houses and our ways of amusing ourselves.
But we can be happier than anybody.
We can go mad with joy, as the people do out
in the fields on a fine Whitsunday.
We make the most of our moment."
She thrust her little chin out defiantly
over her gray fur collar, and Bartley looked
down at her and laughed.
"You are a plucky one, you." He patted her glove
with his hand. "Yes, you are a plucky one."
Hilda sighed. "No, I'm not. Not about
some things, at any rate. It doesn't take pluck
to fight for one's moment, but it takes pluck
to go without--a lot. More than I have.
I can't help it," she added fiercely.
After miles of outlying streets and little
gloomy houses, they reached London itself,
red and roaring and murky, with a thick
dampness coming up from the river, that
betokened fog again to-morrow. The streets
were full of people who had worked indoors
all through the priceless day and had now
come hungrily out to drink the muddy lees of
it. They stood in long black lines, waiting
before the pit entrances of the theatres--
short-coated boys, and girls in sailor hats,
all shivering and chatting gayly. There was
a blurred rhythm in all the dull city noises--
in the clatter of the cab horses and the rumbling
of the busses, in the street calls, and in the
undulating tramp, tramp of the crowd.
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