He glanced at himself as he passed a mirror; and was comforted, if rather awed, by the elegance of the incredibly thin, rather tall young man in the seven-guinea suit, whose pallor, fierce pale blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses and satirically twisted mouth were set off by his soft hat and natty, pale skin gloves.

My god, I look about twenty, thought Francis.

But this did not stop him feeling sicker and sicker as the train drew in to the Bank.

He walked through to Monument, as he had been told to do by Uncle Preston, and came into the street, still feeling sick and beginning to feel that he would have to be sick.

Across the Bridge, and then to the left. He walked on quickly, noticing that there were plenty of pretty girls about; many of them were nice-looking Jewesses, for Monument is on the fringe of the East End, and its wide streets, glaring with pale light and creeping with bewildering traffic, are subject to sudden exotic invasions which make them picturesque.

Francis looked at his watch as he crossed the bridge, because he wanted, like forty other people who were draped over the parapet, to stop and watch a big boat being loaded with white sacks.

It was twenty minutes to eleven. No time to waste watching a boat which was going (so the notice above it said) to Holland. All the River broke on him from either side in its blaze of silver light, with high bright clouds piled above it, and cranes, the colour of rust, receding in procession down the wharves like the enormous, leggy, delicate Martian machines imagined by Mr H. G. Wells.

If I get it, I’ll come out here at lunch time and watch, thought Francis.

It now became obvious that he must be sick, and he cursed his trembling legs and unreliable stomach. There may have been at the back of his mind an impression that his father was to blame for his present condition, but the thought never got itself expressed; he expected life to be intense, full of physical discomforts and excitement, and so it was.

He found Pratt Street, an alley running between tall warehouses made of smoky brown brick. The flaps down their sides were painted dark strawberry red, and there was dull gold lettering on windows and roofs; straw, feeding horses, and waggons and lorries were scattered down the winding length of the street. The sky, high overhead between those smoky canyons, was bright from the reflection of the river.

I’ll find a quiet place, and be sick, thought Francis, slipping behind a lorry piled with more white sacks. (Most of London’s heavier merchandise seemed to be hauled round in fat, white sacks.) Here he discovered a very deserted yard, closed in by warehouses, smelling of old petrol and horses in a friendly mingling.

Francis went behind a door painted the same rich dark red and was sick.

He was very sick; Aunt Grace believed in growing boys having a good breakfast. None of your grapefruit and toast for Aunt Grace.