He went to a hotel in the Adelphi to leave his bag. Then he came out, pausing for a moment irresolutely in the crowd. It was too late, as he had foreseen, to go to Elizabeth. He had made up his mind to see her on his return from Easterham.
An omnibus halted by him: he boarded it, and as he passed the Griffin, he breathed deeply like a monarch entering his own domain, for the scent of the Street was in his nostrils and the old, well-known vision of the lit windows passed before him, and a newsboy ran along shouting a late edition. This was the only Street in the world, he felt, that he loved; its people were his people, and its life was his life.
He turned into the Pen Club, to friendship, good-fellowship and welcome. And all the old friends were there—Larkin, retelling old stories, Chander spinning merry yarns, and Vernham making melancholy epigrams. Willoughby, he learnt, was away on a mystery in the north, and Jamieson was at a first night.
"By the way," said Larkin, "heard about Tommy Pride?"
"No. What's happened?"
"He's left The Day."
"Sacked?" asked Humphrey.
Larkin nodded. "Rather rough on poor old Tommy. Married, isn't he?"
A picture of his first visit to the home of the Prides leapt before Humphrey's eyes, and the comfort, the cheeriness, that hid all the hard work of the week. The news hurt him queerly.
"What's he doing?" he asked.