In Piccadilly Circus his attention was immediately attracted by a number of stout, florid, elderly ladies who were selling some most lovely bouquets for the buttonhole.  This was a temptation impossible to resist, and he lost no time in choosing one.  It cost fourpence, and Austin was so charmed at the skilful way in which the florid lady he had patronised pinned it into the lapel of his jacket that he raised his hat to her on parting with as much ceremony as though she had been a duchess at the very least.  Then, observing that his shoe was dusty, he submitted it to a merry-looking shoeblack, who not only cleaned it and creamed it to perfection but polished up his wooden leg as well; Austin, in his usual absent-minded way, humming to himself the while.  During the operation there suddenly rushed up a drove of very ungainly-looking objects, who, in point of fact, were persons lately arrived from Lancashire to play a football match at the Alexandra Palace—­though Austin, of course, could not be expected to know that; and two of these, staring at him as though he were a wild animal that they had never seen before, enquired with much solicitude how his mother was, and whether he was having a happy day.  Austin took no more notice of them than if they had been flies, but as soon as the shoeblack had finished, and been generously rewarded, he presented them each with a penny.

“Wot’s this for?” growled the foremost.  “We ain’t beggars, we ain’t.  Wot d’ye mean by it?”

“Aren’t you?  I thought you were,” said Austin.  “However, you can keep the pennies.  They will buy you bread, you know.”

The fellows edged off, muttering resentfully, and Austin prepared to cross the road to Piccadilly.  The next moment he received a violent blow on the shoulder from an advancing horse, and was knocked clean off his legs.  He was in the act of half-consciously taking off his hat and begging the horse’s pardon when a stout policeman, coming to the rescue, lifted him bodily up in one arm, and, carrying him over the crossing, deposited him safely on the pavement.  He recovered his breath in a minute or two, and then began to walk down Piccadilly towards the Park.

The streets were gay and crowded, partly with black and grey people who seemed to be going about some business or other, but starred beautifully here and there with bright-eyed, clear-skinned, slender youths in straw hats, something like Austin himself, enjoying their release from school.  Phalanxes of smartly-dressed ladies impeded the traffic outside the windows of all the millinery shops, omnibuses rattled up and down in a never-ending procession, and strident urchins with little pink newspapers under their arms yelled for all they were worth.  Austin, absorbed in the cheerful spectacle, sauntered hither and thither, now attracted by the fresh verdure of the Green Park, now gazing with vivid interest at the ever-varying types of humanity that surged around him; blissfully