of the watchers themselves were drawn into the widening circles of the excited dancers. CHAPTER XIV BILLY OF MAYFAIR There was one, and only one, section of society in London that found unalloyed pleasure in the abnormal features of the period. The youth of the lower orders revelled in the absence of the restraint that hitherto had qualified the natural joy of life. The Boy in the Street in all his varied experiences had never had so good a time before. He made the most of it. He came, not as a single spy, but in battalions. His shrill voice rent the air day and night; his cockney smartness found new and glorious opportunities for exercise; the badinage of the pavement was heard on every side. The march of the Leaguers, or the whirling rush of a band of Dancers, never failed to stir him to loud delight or tumultuous excitement. There was one small youth, here entering the pages of this chronicle, who participated with the keenest relish in the unfolding drama of the day. This boy was Billy of Mayfair. Not always had he found his headquarters in that highly rented and exclusive district. Like the Wise Men, and like many clever boys, he came from the East. But his travels westward began at an extremely early age, and in regard to the migrations of that period Billy’s mind was quite a blank. His grandmother, a woman of no importance, and given, when means permitted, to inebriety, sometimes mentioned Poplar as the place of his nativity, and on other occasions asserted that in the Isle of Dogs Billy’s pink eyes first opened on the murky world down East. There was not much difference, and nothing to choose between those grimy regions, and Billy himself never troubled his white-thatched head about the past. He was in the West Central district when first he realised that he was anywhere, and he accepted his surroundings just as he accepted his physical peculiarities. Billy was quite accustomed to the special, if unflattering, notice which his appearance attracted, and showed no surprise or resentment when addressed contemptuously as a “blooming Halbino.” If a skin specialist had explained to him that his abnormal skin and hair resulted from an absence of the minute particles of colouring matter usually found in the lowest layer of the epidermis, he would have listened respectfully and then departed with the skimming step and whooping yell familiar to his young companions of the gutter. But nobody explained him to himself, and it was an accepted, and not perhaps unwelcome, fact that he was not like other boys.