She thought of the various indignities to which the public submits its ’bus-tickets.  Some people use the ticket as a toothpick, some put spectacles on and read it without understanding, some decorate outstanding features of the ’bus with it.  But I myself tear it gradually into small strips, and grind the strips by means of massage into fine powder.  If the inspector comes, I am perfectly willing to pour the powder into his hand, and yet he often seems annoyed.

Jay reviewed the perspective of faces that lined her ’bus.  They were all ugly, and not one of them was eager.  The British public as a whole considers a deaf, dumb, and blind expression the only decent one to wear in a public conveyance.  We roar through a wonderful and exciting world, and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears, and think about ourselves.  They were mostly men in Jay’s ’bus at that moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of them knew it.  Such a lot of men could never be loved by women, only found expedient.

But there was a sailor, a simple sub-lieutenant, sitting by the door.  Sailors are a race apart.  They have twisty faces, their boots and gloves look curiously accidental.  In London they are rarely seen without a London Mail or a London Opinion in their grasp.  There is something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by, and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some one else.  Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow.  She looked such a fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer to young ladies of this type is to suggest that they have brains.  Jay pondered on this, and then turned elsewhere for inspiration.  All roads of thought at that time led to one destination, so she only allowed herself to go a little way along each road.

And presently she reached the end of her journey.  She walked home, and Chloris was as usual waiting for her just outside the rocking-horse factory at the corner.  Jay, as she passed that factory every day, watched with interest the progress of the grey ghost rocking-horses, eyeless, maneless, and tailless, as they ripened hourly into a form more like that of the friend of youth.

She smelt the little smell that is always astray in Mabel Place, she heard outside in the damp afternoon two rival barrow-men howling a cry that sounded like “One pound hoo-ray!” A neighbour in the garden was exchanging repartee with a gentleman caller.  “Biby, siy Naughty Man, Biby, tell ’im what a caution ’e is.”  But there seemed little hope that the baby would.  These sounds were provided with the constant Brown Borough background of shouts and quarrels and laughter and children crying and innumerable noises of work.