groups, who brought them to a stand with an invet
erate " I say, Mark." What they said she never
quite made out; it was their all so domestically know
ing him, and his knowing them, that mainly struck
her, while her impression, for the rest, was but of
fellow-strollers more vaguely afloat than themselves,
supernumeraries mostly a little battered, whether as
jaunty males or as ostensibly elegant women. They
might have been moving a good deal by a momen
tum that had begun far back, but they were still
brave and personable, still warranted for continu
ance as long again, and they gave her, in especial
collectively, a sense of pleasant voices, pleasanter
than those of actors, of friendly, empty words and
kind, lingering eyes. The lingering eyes looked her
over, the lingering eyes were what went, in almost
confessed simplicity, with the pointless " I say,
Mark "; and what was really most sensible of all
was that, as a pleasant matter of course, if she didn't
mind, he seemed to suggest their letting people, poor
dear things, have the benefit of her.

The odd part was that he made her herself believe,
for amusement, in the benefit, measured by him in
mere manner for wonderful, of a truth, was, as a
means of expression, his slightness of emphasis
that her present good-nature conferred. It was, as
she could easily see, a mild common carnival of
good-nature a mass of London people together, of
sorts and sorts, but who mainly knew each other and
who, in their way, did, no doubt, confess to curiosity.

[[239]]

p238 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p239w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p240

v?