It seemed so much pleasanter and cooler to enter a public house than an omnibus, that the "King's Arms," where the omnibuses stood, swallowed him easily. Here an anarchistical house-painter, who was destructing the British Empire, included him in his remarks; and it was, somehow, nearly five o'clock before he left the "King's Arms" more flushed and most entirely happy, and took an omnibus for Hammersmith.
At nine o'clock he was wandering about Hammersmith asking people to direct him to "The Hollies" in James' Road; at eleven he was criticising the London County Council in a bar-room somewhere in Shepherd's Bush, but it might have been in Paris or Berlin, Vienna or Madrid, for all he knew or cared.
CHAPTER VI A SURPRISE VISIT
Verneede having departed on his mission, Leavesley resumed his work with a feeling of relief.
He had done something. There is nothing that strains the mind so much as sitting waiting with hands folded, so to speak, doing nothing.
When Noah closed the trap-door of the Ark having let forth the dove, he no doubt followed its flight with his mind's eye—here flitting over wastes of water, here perched on the island he desired.
Even so Leavesley, as he worked, followed the flight of Verneede towards the object of his desires.