He reached Trafalgar Square; there the scene was full of animation: children were jumping in and out of the fountains, and shaking themselves as birds do their feathers after a good ducking; men ran round the Landseer lions for a constitutional, and women dodged them on the other side, in this way endeavouring to keep up a semblance of feminine coyness. There was no doubt that this part of London was different from the genteel Mayfair, and it threatened to be rowdy as you approached the City. Lionel walked past Charing Cross, which looked abandoned; but the Strand—the main artery of London’s anatomy—was surging with a buoyant population rushing to the City-heart. Lionel thought he would have great fun in watching office doors, and would perhaps recognise a few millionaire bounders who certainly were not like the Society men of his stamp, and therefore would be more easily recognised. He went up Fleet Street, leaving St Paul’s on his left, walked through Threadneedle Street, where he knew many of the City magnates. Pacing up and down the pavement he thought he would have a good opportunity of seeing the men who went in and out of offices and of conjecturing on their identity. Very soon he witnessed a wild scene of confusion: men darted out of offices suffused with deep blushes; managers of large warehouses ran in and out of houses in delirium! Another idea crossed Lionel’s mind: evidently these people were, like him, unable to recognise anyone; business men were at a loss to know their clerks from their financier friends, as they could not discern buyers from sellers. Of course in this terrible mystification, there was no attempt made at bowing or talking in the streets of London; it was a new departure from last week’s urbanity, when courteousness had been distributed according to the more or less respectability of external appearance.