Priam Farll never tired of the phantasmagoria of Upper Richmond Road.  The interminable, intermittent vision of food dead and alive, and of performers performing the same performance from everlasting to everlasting, and of millions and millions of cigarettes ascending from the mouths of handsome young men in incense to heaven—­this rare vision, of which in all his wanderings he had never seen the like, had the singular effect of lulling his soul into a profound content.  Not once did he arrive at the end of the vision.  No! when he reached Barnes Station he could see the vision still stretching on and on; but, filled to the brim, he would get into an omnibus and return.  The omnibus awoke him to other issues:  the omnibus was an antidote.  In the omnibus cleanliness was nigh to godliness.  On one pane a soap was extolled, and on another the exordium, “For this is a true saying and worthy of all acceptation,” was followed by the statement of a religious dogma; while on another pane was an urgent appeal not to do in the omnibus what you would not do in a drawing-room.  Yes, Priam Farll had seen the world, but he had never seen a city so incredibly strange, so packed with curious and rare psychological interest as London.  And he regretted that he had not discovered London earlier in his life-long search after romance.

At the corner of the High Street he left the omnibus and stopped a moment to chat with his tobacconist.  His tobacconist was a stout man in a white apron, who stood for ever behind a counter and sold tobacco to the most respected residents of Putney.  All his ideas were connected either with tobacco or with Putney.  A murder in the Strand to that tobacconist was less than the breakdown of a motor bus opposite Putney Station; and a change of government less than a change of programme at the Putney Empire.  A rather pessimistic tobacconist, not inclined to believe in a First Cause, until one day a drunken man smashed Salmon and Gluckstein’s window down the High Street, whereupon his opinion of Providence went up for several days!  Priam enjoyed talking to him, though the tobacconist was utterly impervious to ideas and never gave out ideas.  This morning the tobacconist was at his door.  At the other corner was the sturdy old woman whom Priam had observed from his window.  She sold flowers.

“Fine old woman, that!” said Priam heartily, after he and the tobacconist had agreed upon the fact that it was a glorious morning.

“She used to be at the opposite corner by the station until last May but one, when the police shifted her,” said the tobacconist.

“Why did the police shift her?” asked Priam.

“I don’t know as I can tell you,” said the tobacconist.  “But I remember her this twelve year.”

“I only noticed her this morning,” said Priam.  “I saw her from my bedroom window, coming down the Werter Road.  I said to myself, ’She’s the finest old woman I ever saw in my life!’”