The rollcall Author:Arnold Bennett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI THE DINNER Early on the morning of a Tuesday in the second half of June, 1903, George Cannon was moving fast on a motor-bicycle westwards down t... more »he slope of Piccadilly. At any rate he had the sensation of earlincss, and was indeed thereby quite invigorated; it almost served instead of the breakfast which he had not yet taken. But thousands of people travelling in the opposite direction in horse-omnibuses and in a few motor-buses seemed to regard the fact of their being abroad at that hour as dully normal. They had fought, men and girls, for places in the crammed vehicles; they had travelled from far lands such as Putney; they had been up for hours, and the morning, which was so new to George, had lost its freshness for them; they were well used to the lustrous summer glories of the Green Park; what they chiefly beheld in the Green Park was the endless lines of wayfarers radiating from Victoria along the various avenues on the way, like themselves, to offices, warehouses, and shops. Of the stablemen, bus-washers, drivers, mechanics, chauffeurs, and conductors, who had left their beds much in advance even of the travellers, let us not speak — even they had begun the day later than their wives, mothers, or daughters. All this flying population, urged and preoccupied by pitiless time, gazed down upon George and saw a gav voung swellwithout a care in the world rushing on " one of those motor-bikes " to freedom. George was well aware of the popular gaze, and he supported it with negligent pride. He had the air of having been born to greatness; cigarette smoke and the fumes of exploded petrol and the rattle of explosions made a fme wake behind his greatness. In two years, since he had walked into Mr. Haim's parlour, his body had broadened, his eyes had slightly hard...« less