"Ah," he said, "that makes a difference. If you wanted a bus now I might help you; but I'm lame, you see—only got one real leg. Run over by a van a matter of ten years ago, and I don't do much hard walking myself. Still you can't go far wrong if you take the first on the left."
We tore ourselves away, took the first on the left and walked on, ever on, through a wilderness of silent and unfamiliar houses. At last we came upon a baker's cart. "Ask him," said my fellow-traveller, pointing to the baker's man. I asked him.
"Are we right," I said, "for Paddington?"
"Oh yes," he said, "you're right enough. You'll get there in time, but you'll have to walk round the world first. My advice is to go in the opposite direction and take the second on the right, close to the dairy; you can't miss it."
Again we fled into the blackness. Paddington had shrunk to the size of a needle and we were in a huge bottle of hay, an oriental bottle full of weird surprises in the shape of sultans, genie, princesses, mosques, one-eyed porters, but never a hint of a railway station. How, indeed, could there be a railway station in Bagdad five hundred years ago?
"Ask again," said the other one.
I addressed a gentleman who was hurrying over a bridge. "Can you," I said, "direct me to Paddington station?"
He murmured something unintelligible and pointed to his ears.
I repeated my question loudly and again he murmured. At last I made out his words: "Stone deaf, stone deaf."
"Great heavens," I said, "all the infirmities of the world are come out against us. The man with one leg—the stone-deaf man. What next, what next?"