It was a long journey. Mr. Cattley and he went over the common to the station at twelve o’clock of a brilliant, sunshiny February day, when all the roads in their wetness reflected the wonderful colours of the sky, and the very puddles were strewn with turquoise and gold; but it was between six and seven at night, dark and cold, when they reached the great town, which John entered with all the natural excitement of a country boy who has never seen such a place before. Mr. Cattley took him to the lodging to which he himself usually came on his visits here; for his brother, like most other people of his importance, lived out of town. He took John next morning through a world of streets, some of which were imposing and brilliant, but by far the greater part mean, narrow, and unlovely, to the place where the great foundry was, and where but for an accident he himself might have been. The youth went over it with a mixture of pleasure and repulsion. The novelty, the bustle, the feeling of a great new energy unknown to him before, the quickened sense of living and great creative work went to his head like a new inspiration; but the plunging and ploughing of pistons and wheels, the huge monstrous machines which looked like sentient creatures; the grind, and whirl, and noise, and endless movement, in so many different senses at once, up and down, round and round, back and forward, contradicting each other, made the brain of the country lad go round too, with a sickening confusion. A touch of envy of all those accustomed workmen, who understood, and moved about so coolly among, this confusing round of wheels, and at the same time a sense of thankfulness that he was not himself to take his place among them, was in John’s mind. This was not what had fired his imagination, or rather, had fired Elly’s imagination, and thrown a warm reflection upon his. The lighthouses, the canals, the civilising roads, the works that would be good for humanity, as well as worth a man’s while, were different from all this buzzing and plunging. Yet John was wise enough to know that the two things were too closely connected to be severed. He was glad, however, that he was to be set to surveying and outdoor work rather than to this.