Chapter Ten.
How I ran against my Friend Smith in an Unexpected Quarter.
I suppose my uncle thought it good discipline to turn a young fellow like me adrift for a whole day in London to shift for myself, and wrestle single-handed with the crisis that was to decide my destiny.
He may have been right, but when, after an hour’s excited journey in the train, I found myself along with several hundred fellow-mortals standing in a street which seemed to be literally alive with people, I, at any rate, neither admired his wisdom nor blessed him for his good intentions.
Every one but myself seemed to be in a desperate hurry. Had I not been sure it was the way of the place, I should have been tempted to suppose some tremendous fire, or some extraordinary event was taking place at the other end of the street, and that every one was rushing to get a glimpse of it. I stood a minute or two outside the station, hoping to be left behind; but behold, no sooner had the tail of the race passed me, when another, indeed two other train-loads of humanity swarmed down upon me, and, hustling me as they swept by, fairly carried me along with them.
One thing alarmed me prodigiously. It was not the crowd, or the noise, or the cabs, or the omnibuses, or the newspaper-boys, or the shops, or the policemen, or the chimney-pot hats. These all astonished me, as well they might. But what terrified me was the number of boys like myself who formed part of the procession, and who, every one of them as I imagined, were hurrying towards Hawk Street.
My uncle had told me that I should find Hawk Street turning out at the end of the street in which the station stood, and this was precisely the direction in which these terrible boys were all going.
How knowing they all looked, and how confident! There was not one of them, I was certain, but was more intelligent than I, and quicker at figures. How I hated them as they swaggered along, laughing and joking with one another, looking familiarly on the scene around them, crossing the road in the very teeth of the cab-horses, and not one of them caring or thinking a bit about me. What chance had I among all these?
There was not much conceit left in me, I assure you, as I followed meekly in their wake towards Hawk Street that morning.
My uncle’s directions had been so simple that I had never calculated on having any difficulty in finding my destination. But it’s all very well in a quiet country town to find one street that turns out of another, but in London, between nine and ten in the morning, it’s quite a different matter. At least so I found it. Half a dozen streets turned out of the one which I and the stream descended, and though I carefully studied the name of each in turn, no Hawk Street was there.