“I cannot say, I do not understand. From the deep sea I come, but only as a bird loosed from a child’s hand with a cord. When she calls I must return.”
“It is so with these children of mine. They come to me, I know not whence. I nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do not see plucks them back. And others take their place.”
Through the still air there passes a ripple of sound. The sleeping City stirs with a faint sigh. A distant milk-cart rattling by raises a thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a yoked army. Soon from every street there rises the soothing cry, “Mee’hilk—mee’hilk.”
London like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, crying for its milk. These be the white-smocked nurses hastening with its morning nourishment. The early church bells ring. “You have had your milk, little London. Now come and say your prayers. Another week has just begun, baby London. God knows what will happen, say your prayers.”
One by one the little creatures creep from behind the blinds into the streets. The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City’s face. The fretful noises of the day have come again. Silence, her lover of the night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away. And you, gentle Reader, return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency of the early riser.
But it was of a certain week-day morning, in the Strand that I was thinking. I was standing outside Gatti’s Restaurant, where I had just breakfasted, listening leisurely to an argument between an indignant lady passenger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an omnibus conductor.
“For what d’ye want thin to paint Putney on ye’r bus, if ye don’t go to Putney?” said the lady.
“We do go to Putney,” said the conductor.
“Thin why did ye put me out here?”
“I didn’t put you out, yer got out.”