'Family. They put it across me sometimes. Can't be helped.'
'Good egg!' was the reply, as the youth looked past him admiringly at Joan.
'Oh!—my sister,' mentioned Tom, proudly, and with a flash of self-satisfaction; 'Joan, a friend of mine—Mr. Spindle,' adding under his breath something about Rolls Royce and Limousines, as though Mr. Spindle, who was actually merely an employé in some motor works, owned several expensive cars.
Joan, ignorant of the strange modern slang they used, nodded sweetly, then turned to watch the surging throng of energetic humanity on the pavement below. She was in the corner seat. Father and Mother sat below—inside. The sea of human beings rolled past like waves of water.
'Everybody going somewhere,' she said half to herself with a thrill of wonder. It struck her that, though hardly any one looked up, some must surely want to fly, and one or two, at least, must know they could. She wondered there were no collisions. All dodged and slid past and side-stepped so cleverly. The energy, skill, and subconscious calculation they used were considerable. In each brain was a distinct and separate purpose, a mental picture of the spot each busily made for, while yet all seemed governed by one common denial: that nothing off the earth was conceivable even. Like crowding ants, they stuck to the ground, shuffling laboriously along the world-worn routes. Their minds, she was persuaded, knew heavy ways, unaware that horizons are made to lift. She watched the herd in search for amusement after the drudgery of the day, engaged upon a common search. What they really sought, she felt, was air. Only they knew it not. In ignorance they toiled to find artificial excitement— pleasure.
She longed to lift them up and swing them loose into undivided space, let them know freedom, lightness, spontaneous carelessness. If they would only dance—it would be something.
'And all going to the same place,' she added aloud. She sighed.
'I hope to God they're not,' said Tom in his scratchy voice, thinking of the cinema.
'Eh?' remarked Mr. Spindle, with a thrust forward of his head.
The motor-bus lumbered into the Circus and drew up, leaning over to one side.