are the angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in
and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high sounds of voice and
organ. For ever requiem--repose. Tired with scrubbing the steps of the
Prudential Society's office, which she did year in year out, Mrs.
Lidgett took her seat beneath the great Duke's tomb, folded her hands,
and half closed her eyes. A magnificent place for an old woman to rest
in, by the very side of the great Duke's bones, whose victories mean
nothing to her, whose name she knows not, though she never fails to
greet the little angels opposite, as she passes out, wishing the like on
her own tomb, for the leathern curtain of the heart has flapped wide,
and out steal on tiptoe thoughts of rest, sweet melodies. ... Old
Spicer, jute merchant, thought nothing of the kind though. Strangely
enough he'd never been in St. Paul's these fifty years, though his
office windows looked on the churchyard. "So that's all? Well, a gloomy
old place. ... Where's Nelson's tomb? No time now--come again--a coin to
leave in the box. ... Rain or fine is it? Well, if it would only make up
its mind!" Idly the children stray in--the verger dissuades them--and
another and another ... man, woman, man, woman, boy ... casting their
eyes up, pursing their lips, the same shadow brushing the same faces;
the leathern curtain of the heart flaps wide.

Nothing could appear more certain from the steps of St. Paul's than that
each person is miraculously provided with coat, skirt, and boots; an
income; an object. Only Jacob, carrying in his hand Finlay's Byzantine
Empire, which he had bought in Ludgate Hill, looked a little different;
for in his hand he carried a book, which book he would at nine-thirty
precisely, by his own fireside, open and study, as no one else of all
these multitudes would do. They have no houses. The streets belong to
them; the shops; the churches; theirs the innumerable desks; the
stretched office lights; the vans are theirs, and the railway slung high