Under their feet was an accumulation of sharp, dry dust, detritus of stone, asphalt and steel. In corners where the fugitive rubbish had found refuge from the driving wind, the dust had accumulated in flat mounds, broken by scraps of paper or the torn flag of some rain-soaked poster that gave an untidy air of human refuse. Across the open way of certain roads the dust lay in a waved pattern of nearly parallel lines, like the ridged sand of the foreshore. For some time they kept to the pavements from force of habit. "I say, Mill, don't you feel adventurous?" asked Blanche. Millie looked dissatisfied. "It's so lonely, B.," was her expression of feeling. "Never had London all to myself before," said Blanche. Near Hammersmith Broadway they saw a tram standing on the rails. Its thin tentacle still clung to the overhead wire that had once given it life, as if it waited there patiently hoping for a renewal of the exhilarating current. Almost unconsciously Blanche and Millie quickened their pace. Perhaps this was the outermost dying ripple of life, the furthest outpost of the new activity that was springing up in central London. But the tram was guarded by something that in the hot, still air seemed to surround it with an almost visible mist. "Eugh!" ejaculated Millie and shrank back. "Don't go, Blanche. It's awful!" Blanche's hand also had leapt to her face, but she took a few steps forward and peered into the sunlit case of steel and glass. She saw a heap of clothes about the framework of a grotesquely jointed scarecrow, and the gleam of something round, smooth and white. She screamed faintly, and a filthy dog crept, with a thin yelp, from under the seat and came to the door of the tram. For a moment it stood there with an air that was half placatory, wrinkling its nose and feebly raising a stump of propitiatory tail, then, with another protesting yelp, it crept back, furtive and ashamed, to its unlawful meat. The two girls, handkerchief to nose, hurried by breathless, with bent heads. A little past Hammersmith Broadway they had their first sight of human life. Two gaunt faces looked out at them from an upper window. Blanche waved her hand, but the women in the house, half-wondering, half-fearful, at the strange sight of these two fancifully dressed girls, shook their heads and drew back. Doubtless there was some secret hoard of food in that house and the inmates feared the demands of charity. "Well, we aren't quite the last, anyway," commented Blanche. "What were they afraid of?" asked Millie. "Thought we wanted to cadge, I expect," suggested Blanche. "Mean things," was her sister's comment. "Well! we weren't so over-anxious to have visitors," Blanche reminded her. "We didn't want their beastly food," complained the affronted Millie.