The more alert pedestrian who
had just emerged from the station did not grumble at the delay--he even
turned it to advantage by rolling and lighting a cigarette. The ragged
regiment filed past, a soiled, frayed, hopeless-looking gang. Three
hundred men had gathered on the south side of the river, and were
marching to join other contingents on the Thames Embankment, whence
some thousands of them would be shepherded by policemen up
Northumberland Avenue, across Trafalgar Square, and so, by way of Lower
Regent Street and Piccadilly, to Hyde Park, where they would hoarsely
cheer every demagogue who blamed the Government for their miseries.
London, like Richard Royson, would stand on the pavement and watch
them. Like him, it would drop a few coins into the collecting boxes
rattled under its nose, and grin at the absurd figure cut by a very fat
man who waddled notably, among his leaner brethren, for hunger and
substance are not often found so strangely allied. But, having salved
its conscience by giving, and gratified its sarcastic humor by
laughing, London took thought, perhaps, when it read the strange device
on the banner carried by this Vauxhall contingent.
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