CHAPTER II--M'KAY



It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to Goodge Street. The
churches and chapels were emptying themselves, but the great mass of
the population had been "nowhere." I had dinner with M'Kay, and as
the day wore on the fog thickened. London on a dark Sunday
afternoon, more especially about Goodge Street, is depressing. The
inhabitants drag themselves hither and thither in languor and
uncertainty. Small mobs loiter at the doors of the gin palaces.
Costermongers wander aimlessly, calling "walnuts" with a cry so
melancholy that it sounds as the wail of the hopelessly lost may be
imagined to sound when their anguish has been deadened by the
monotony of a million years.

About two or three o'clock decent working men in their best clothes
emerge from the houses in such streets as Nassau Street. It is part
of their duty to go out after dinner on Sunday with the wife and
children. The husband pushes the perambulator out of the dingy
passage, and gazes doubtfully this way and that way, not knowing
whither to go, and evidently longing for the Monday, when his work,
however disagreeable it may be, will be his plain duty. The wife
follows carrying a child, and a boy and girl in unaccustomed apparel
walk by her side. They come out into Mortimer Street. There are no
shops open; the sky over their heads is mud, the earth is mud under
their feet, the muddy houses stretch in long rows, black, gaunt,