"Not half handsome enough."
For the rest of the journey she's convinced I have a headache. It's no
good telling her that I haven't; much to my annoyance and amusement
she swabs my forehead with eau-de-Cologne, telling me that I shall
soon feel better.
The streets through which we pass are on the south side of the
Thames. It's Saturday evening. Hawkers' barrows line the kerb; women
with draggled skirts and once gay hats are doing their Sunday
shopping. We're having a kind of triumphant procession; with these
people to feel is to express. We catch some of their remarks: "'Oo!
Look at 'is poor leg!" "My, but ain't 'e done in shockin'!"
Dear old London--so kind, so brave, so frankly human! You're just like
the chaps at the Front--you laugh when you suffer and give when you're
starving; you never know when not to be generous. You wear your heart
in your eyes and your lips are always ready for kissing, I think of
you as one of your own flower-girls--hoarse of voice, slatternly as to
corsets, with a big tumbled fringe over your forehead, and a heart so
big that you can chuck away your roses to a wounded Tommy and go away
yourself with an empty basket to sleep under an archway. Do you wonder
that to us you spell Blighty? We love you.
We come to a neighbourhood more respectable and less demonstrative,
skirt a common, are stopped at a porter's lodge and turn into a
parkland. The glow of sunset is ended; the blue-grey of twilight is
settling down.
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