We talked of other streets in London which are filled with shop-windows glamorous of prospect for the gourmet; and not only for the gourmet, but for all simple-minded folk. Georgie talked of the toy-shops of Holborn. He made gestures expressive of paradisiacal delight. He is one of the few people I know who can sympathize with my own childishness. He never snubs my enthusiasms or my discoveries. Other friends sit heavily upon me when I display emotion over things like shops, taxicabs, dinners, drinks, railway journeys, music-halls, and cry, "Tommy--for the Lord's sake, _shut up!_" But Georgie understands. He understands why I cackle with delight when the new Stores Catalogue arrives. (By the way, if ever I made a list of the Hundred Best Books, number one would be an Illustrated Stores Catalogue. What a wonderful bedside book it is! There is surely nothing so provocative to the sluggish imagination. Open it where you will, it fires an unending train of dreams. It is so full of thousands of things which you simply must have and for which you have no use at all, that you finally put it down and write a philosophic essay on The Vanity of Human Wishes, and thereby earn three guineas. Personally, I have found over a dozen short-story plots in the pages of the Civil Service Stores List.) When we tired of talking, Georgie inquired what we should do _now_. I put it: suppose we took a stroll along Bankside to London Bridge, and turned off to Bermondsey to take a taste of the dolours of the Irish colony, and then follow the river to Cherry Gardens and cross to Wapping by the Rotherhithe Tunnel; but he said No, and gave as his reason that the little girls of the Irish and foreign quarters were too distractingly lovely for him, as he is one of those unfortunates who want every pretty thing they see and are miserable for a week if they can't get it. His idea was to run over to Homerton. Did I know old Jumbo? Fat old Jumbo. Jumbo, who kept Jumbo's, under the arches, where you got cut from the joint, two veg., buggy-bolster, and cheese-roll. I did. So to Jumbo's we went by the Stoke Newington 'bus, whose conductor shouted imperatively throughout the journey: "Aw fez pliz!" though we were the only passengers; and on the way I made a little, soft song, the burden of which was: "I do love my table d'hote, but O you Good Pull Up For Carmen!"