“Settled, then, Mr. Hammond!” There were a few more words exchanged between master and man, and then they parted.
As Tom Hammond strode along the Embankment towards Waterloo Bridge, his heart was the heart of a boy again.
“Is life worth living!” he cried inwardly, answering his own question with the rapturous words: “In this hour I know nothing else that earth could give me to make life more joyous!”
People passing him saw his face radiant with a wondrous joy. It’s rare to see peace, even, in faces in our great cities. It is rarer still to see joy’s gleam. He allowed his glance to flash all around him, as he murmured, “I am glad, too, that I am in London. Who dare say that London is dull, or grim, or sordid? Who was it that wrote, “No man curses the town more heartily than I, but after travelling by mountains, plain, desert, forest, and on the deep sea, one comes back to London and finds it the most wonderful place of them all!”
“Ah! It was Roger Pocock, I believe, wrote that sentiment. Roger Pocock, ‘I looks towards yer, sir. Them’s my senterments!’”
He laughed low and gleefully at his own merry mood. Then as his eyes took in the river, the moving panorama of the Embankment, and caught the throb of the mighty pulsing of life all about him, Le Gallienne’s lines came to him, and, while he moved onward, he murmured:
“London, whose loveliness is everywhere.
London so beautiful at morning light,
One half forgets how fair she is at night.
“London as beautiful at set of sun