Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/116

 London for a few days, and see what's to be seen; and then I'll take a run over and have a look at the Frenchmen. I reckon I'd better take a cab, or I'll get bushed. Well, so long, old man, and good luck! We're pretty sure to run against each other again, knockin' round the world." He gave my fingers a squeeze that glued them together with pain; and so I parted with the last of the Australians for a while. Outside the station I saw him grinning good-naturedly down on a very short, fat cabman,

We took a four-wheeler from Fenchurch Street. Looking at things from the outside, the principal business streets of Australian capitals, narrower, without the verandahs, and with a little more traffic, would do for London; and streets like Pitt Street, Sydney, or Collins Street, Melbourne, would ornament the old city. The dirty, gritty, blackened walls are very striking, after the yellow-tinted freestone, clean brick and painted cement of Sydney. The walls of old Newgate are coated like the inside of a neglected chimney. When I first saw the blackened walls I had a vague sort of notion that there had been a big fire round there lately, and for days I had a kind of idea that the terraces had been painted black, or some dark colour, so as not to show the dirt.

Just as we were turning out of the streets which I thought, by the look of them, must run down towards the City, the Buster's Dad pointed to a dingy black wall, and said: " There's the Bank." It was low and very dirty, and not particularly solid looking. I thought it would be all the better for a scrape down