Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/124

112 "Come with me, sir ! Come with me. I know it! I'll show you the place!—it's up here! You passed it! You'd never find it!" (His limbs were trembling violently now. God help us all!) "There it is; go right up those steps and in through that big door! Do you want to find any other place, sir? I'll show you any place! Shall I wait, sir? I'm—I'm a messenger—I've been round here forthirty-five years, and——"

"You've been here for thirty-five years?"

"Yes, sir ! thirty-five years——" His whine broke loose again on the "thirty-five."

"You don't seem to have done much good with your time," I said.

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before I felt the foolish brutality of them. It benefited him, though, for I gave him enough to drown his hell for a while. He wanted more ("make it even money, sir!"), but that was human nature.

But London is perhaps the easiest city in the world to find your way about in. It is here that you get the full benefit of the advice, "Ask a policeman." I like the London policeman; he is large, good-natured and seemingly broad-minded. When you speak to him he doesn't turn slowly and, if you are shabby, regard you as if you had shoved up against him on purpose. He doesn't look you up and down and say "Phwhat's that? Oh, the Barrank! You ought to know where that is. What do you want to go there?" Neither does he turn his back on you, jerk his thumb over his shoulder and say, "It's beyant."

He doesn't scratch his head, think lazily, and say,