Psmith's attitude towards the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune
was to regard them with a bland smile, as if they were part of an
entertainment got up for his express benefit.

Arriving at Paddington, Mike stood on the platform, waiting for his box
to emerge from the luggage-van, with mixed feelings of gloom and
excitement. The gloom was in the larger quantities, perhaps, but the
excitement was there, too. It was the first time in his life that he
had been entirely dependent on himself. He had crossed the Rubicon. The
occasion was too serious for him to feel the same helplessly furious
feeling with which he had embarked on life at Sedleigh. It was possible
to look on Sedleigh with quite a personal enmity. London was too big to
be angry with. It took no notice of him. It did not care whether he was
glad to be there or sorry, and there was no means of making it care.
That is the peculiarity of London. There is a sort of cold
unfriendliness about it. A city like New York makes the new arrival
feel at home in half an hour; but London is a specialist in what Psmith
in his letter had called the Distant Stare. You have to buy London's
good-will.

Mike drove across the Park to Victoria, feeling very empty and small.
He had settled on Dulwich as the spot to get lodgings, partly because,
knowing nothing about London, he was under the impression that rooms
anywhere inside the four-mile radius were very expensive, but
principally because there was a school at Dulwich, and it would be a
comfort being near a school. He might get a game of fives there
sometimes, he thought, on a Saturday afternoon, and, in the summer,
occasional cricket.

Wandering at a venture up the asphalt passage which leads from Dulwich