in importance to the Redcliffe Arms, night fell earlier than it ought to
have done, owing to a vast rain-cloud over Chelsea. A few drops
descended, but so warm and so gently that they were not like real rain,
and sentimentalists could not believe that they would wet. People,
arriving mysteriously out of darkness, gathered sparsely on the
pavements, lingered a few moments, and were swallowed by omnibuses that
bore them obscurely away. At intervals an individual got out of an
omnibus and adventured hurriedly forth and was lost in the gloom. The
omnibuses, all white, trotted on an inward curve to the pavement,
stopped while the conductor, with hand raised to the bell-string,
murmured apathetically the names of streets and of public-houses, and
then they jerked off again on an outward curve to the impatient double
ting of the bell. To the east was a high defile of hospitals, and to the
west the Workhouse tower faintly imprinted itself on the sombre sky.

The drops of rain grew very large and heavy, and the travellers, instead
of waiting on the kerb, withdrew to the shelter of the wall of the
Queen's Elm. George was now among the group, precipitated like the rest,
as it were, out of the solution of London. George was of the age which
does not admit rain or which believes that it is immune from the usual
consequences of exposure to rain. When advised, especially by women, to
defend himself against the treacheries of the weather, he always
protested confidently that he would 'be all right.' Thus with a stick
and a straw hat he would affront terrible dangers. It was a species of
valour which the event often justified. Indeed he generally was all
right. But to-night, afoot on the way from South Kensington Station in a
region quite unfamiliar to him, he was intimidated by the slapping
menace of the big drops. Reality faced him. His scared thought ran:
"Unless I do something at once I shall get wet through." Impossible to
appear drenched at old Haim's! So he had abandoned all his pretensions