CHAPTER FIVE


"I rather think," said Jacob, taking his pipe from his mouth, "it's in
Virgil," and pushing back his chair, he went to the window.

The rashest drivers in the world are, certainly, the drivers of post-
office vans. Swinging down Lamb's Conduit Street, the scarlet van
rounded the corner by the pillar box in such a way as to graze the kerb
and make the little girl who was standing on tiptoe to post a letter
look up, half frightened, half curious. She paused with her hand in the
mouth of the box; then dropped her letter and ran away. It is seldom
only that we see a child on tiptoe with pity--more often a dim
discomfort, a grain of sand in the shoe which it's scarcely worth while
to remove--that's our feeling, and so--Jacob turned to the bookcase.

Long ago great people lived here, and coming back from Court past
midnight stood, huddling their satin skirts, under the carved door-posts
while the footman roused himself from his mattress on the floor,
hurriedly fastened the lower buttons of his waistcoat, and let them in.
The bitter eighteenth-century rain rushed down the kennel. Southampton
Row, however, is chiefly remarkable nowadays for the fact that you will
always find a man there trying to sell a tortoise to a tailor. "Showing
off the tweed, sir; what the gentry wants is something singular to catch
the eye, sir--and clean in their habits, sir!" So they display their
tortoises.

At Mudie's corner in Oxford Street all the red and blue beads had run