She roused herself at last from her puzzled contemplation and turned to glance at her mother. Mrs. Henderson was looking out ahead. The exhausted face was ready, Miriam saw, with its faintly questioning eyebrows and tightly-held lips, for emotional response. She turned away uneasily to the spellbound streets. “Useless to try to talk about anything.... Mother would be somehow violent. She would be overpowering. The strange new impressions would be dissolved.” But she must do something, show some sign of companionship. She began humming softly. The air was so full of clamour that she could not hear her voice. The houses and shops had disappeared. Drab brick walls were passing slowly by on either side. A goods’ yard. She deepened her humming, accentuating her phrases so that the sound might reach her companion through the reverberations of the clangour of shunting trains. 7 The high brick walls were drawing away. The end of the long roadway was in sight. Its widening mouth offered no sign of escape from the disquieting strangeness. The open stretch of thoroughfare into which they emerged was fed by innumerable lanes of traffic. From the islands dotted over its surface towered huge lamp standards branching out thin arms. As they rattled noisily over the stone setts they jolted across several lines of tramway and wove their way through currents of traffic crossing each other in all directions. “I wonder where we’re going--I wonder if this is a Piccadilly bus,” Miriam thought of saying. Impossible to shout through the din. 8 The driver gathered up his horses and they clattered deafeningly over the last open stretch and turned into a smooth wide prospect. “Oh bliss, wood-paving,” murmured Miriam. A mass of smoke-greyed, sharply steepled stone building appeared on the right. Her eyes rested on its soft shadows. On the left a tall grey church was coming towards them, spindling up into the sky. It sailed by, showing Miriam a circle of little stone pillars built into its spire. Plumy trees streamed by, standing large and separate on moss-green grass railed from the roadway. Bright white-faced houses with pillared porches shone through from behind them and blazed white above them against the blue sky. Wide side streets opened showing high balconied houses. The side streets were feathered with trees and ended mistily. Away ahead were edges of clean bright masonry in profile, soft tufted heads of trees, bright green in the clear light. At the end of the vista the air was like pure saffron-tinted mother-of-pearl. Miriam sat back and drew a deep breath. 9 “Well, chickie?” “What’s the matter?” “Why, you’ve been very funny!” “How?” “You’ve been so dummel.” “No, I haven’t.” “Oh--eh.” “How d’you mean I’ve been funny?” “Not speaking to poor old mum-jam.” “Well, you haven’t spoken to me.” “No.”