Where did this loss take place, if the gains
were secured at football? This inquiry is not quite so cheerful as the
other. But while the victories were once going forward in the
playground, the defeats or disasters were once going forward in some
other place, presumably. And this was surely the place that was not a
playground, the place where the future wives of the football players were
sitting still while their future husbands were playing football.
This is the train of thought that followed the grey figure of a woman on
a bicycle in Oxford Street. She had an enormous and top-heavy omnibus at
her back. All the things on the near side of the street--the things
going her way--were going at different paces, in two streams, overtaking
and being overtaken. The tributary streets shot omnibuses and carriages,
cabs and carts--some to go her own way, some with an impetus that carried
them curving into the other current, and other some making a straight
line right across Oxford Street into the street opposite. Besides all
the unequal movement, there were the stoppings. It was a delicate tangle
to keep from knotting.
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