At the other end I was met by my cousin George, a big, red-haired hobbledehoy of seventeen, with a curiously small face, bright brown eyes with a reddish light in them, and a freckled skin. George, I remembered, used to be amusing, and when I saw him standing on the platform my spirits rose a little. He proposed that I should send on my luggage, and that we ourselves should walk, as he wanted to make a call on the way. When we had arranged this we set out. I had not been so frequently in Belfast that I did not take an interest in the streets. Just now, it being Saturday afternoon, they were full of people, and at the end of the Queen’s Bridge some kind of noisy meeting――religious or political――was in full swing, but we did not stop to listen. Presently we turned to our left into a long straight street lined with unattractive, unprosperous-looking shops, and so narrow that in one place there was not room for two trams to pass. There was a liberal sprinkling of public-houses, of cheap clothiers and greengrocers, while here and there the gilded sign of a pawnbroker hung out over the greasy pavement. I was about to ask why we had chosen such a disagreeable route, when George touched my arm and said cheerfully, “Here we are.” “Here!” I echoed, with involuntary dismay. “But――――” “We live over the shop,” George explained. He had noticed my surprise, however, and had coloured. I pretended to have been only astonished that we had reached our journey’s end so quickly, but I don’t know that George was deceived. Inwardly I was furious with my father for arranging for me to come to live in such a place, with a public lavatory hardly ten yards away, and facing the windows. The crowded street, the mean, dingy houses, the mean, dingy people, the noise and rattle of innumerable trams: it was all disgusting, even beyond my expectations! And I was to live here! I simply wouldn’t do it. “We haven’t been here very long,” George continued. “We used to be round in Shaftesbury Square.” Then, as I stood motionless on the pavement, “Aren’t you coming in?” I followed him into the shop in silence. As he pushed open the door a bell answered with a clear, decisive ping. There was a shop on either side of the passage――one stocked with pipes, tobacco, cigarettes, and sweets; the other with newspapers, stationery, and cheap editions of books in hideous paper bindings. In the tobacco department there was nobody; in the stationery department a girl was moving about, fixing things. She turned round on our entrance and George introduced me: “My cousin, Mr. Peter Waring, Miss Izzy.”