The first was on an omnibus.  A big man with a grey beard who was alone on the seat.  Several other seats had only one passenger; the rest—­mine among them—­were full.  At Westminster came up a youth and a girl who very obviously were lovers.  Owing to the disposition of the seats they had to separate, the girl subsiding into the place beside the big man immediately in front of me.  At first he said nothing, and then, just as we were passing the scaffolding of the Cenotaph, he did something which proved him to be very much out of the common, a creature apart.  Reaching across and touching the youth on the shoulder, he said, “Let me change places with you.  I expect you young people would like to sit together.”

That was exceptional, you will agree.  He was right too; the young people did like to sit together.  I could see that.  And the more the omnibus rocked and lurched the more they liked it.

The second exceptional man was a taxi-driver.  I wanted to get to a certain office before it shut, and there were very few minutes to do it in.  The driver did his best, but we arrived just too late; the door was locked.

“That’s a bit of hard luck,” he said.  “But they’re all so punctual closing now.  It’s the daylight-saving does it.  Makes people think of the open-air more than they used.”

As I finished paying him—­no small affair, with all the new supplements—­he resumed.

“I’m sorry you had the journey for nothing,” he said.  “It’s rough.  But never mind—­have something on Comrade for the Grand Prix” (he pronounced “Prix” to rhyme with “fix”) “in France on Sunday.  I’m told it’s the goods.  Then you won’t mind about your bad luck this afternoon.  Don’t forget—­ Comrade to win and one, two, three.”

After this I must revise my opinion of taxi-drivers, which used not to be very high:  especially as Comrade differed from most racehorses of my acquaintance by coming in first.

The third man perhaps was more unexpected than exceptional.  His unexpectedness took the form not of benevolence but of culture.  He is a vendor of newspapers.  A pleasant old fellow with a smiling weather-beaten face, grey moustache and a cloth cap, whom I have known for most of the six years during which he has stood every afternoon except Sundays on the kerb between a lamp-post and a letter-box at one of London’s busiest corners.  I have bought his papers and referred to the weather all that time, but I never talked with him before.  Why, I cannot say; I suppose because the hour had not struck.  On Friday, however, we had a little conversation, all growing from the circumstance that while he was counting out change I noticed a fat volume protruding from his coat pocket and asked him what it was.

It was his reply that qualified him to be numbered among Friday’s elect.  “That book?” he said—­“that’s Barchester Towers.”

I asked him if he read much.

He said he loved reading, and particularly stories.  MARIE CORELLI, OUIDA, he read them all; but TROLLOPE was his favourite.  He liked novels in series; he liked to come on the same people again.