ill.
As the day broke even the "bluest" stories failed to raise a laugh.
At last some left, then the lords left; ten minutes after Mike,
Frank, Harding, and Thompson were alone.

"Those infernal fellows wouldn't go, and now I'm not a bit sleepy."

"I am," said Thompson. "Come on, Harding; you are going my way."

"Going your way!"

"Yes; you can go through the Park. The walk will do you good."

"I should like a walk," said Escott, "I'm not a bit sleepy now."

"Come on then; walk with me as far as Hyde Park Corner."

"And come home alone! Not if I know it--I'll go if Mike will come."

"I'll go," said Mike. "You'll come with us, Harding?"

"It is out of my way, but if you are all going ... Where's John
Norton?"

"He left about an hour ago."

"Let's wake him up."

As they passed up the Temple towards the Strand entrance, they turned
into Pump Court, intending to shout. But John's window was open, and
he stood, his head out, taking the air.

"What!--not gone to bed yet?"

"No; I have bad indigestion, and cannot sleep."

"We are going to walk as far as Hyde Park Corner with Thompson. Just
the thing for you; you'll walk off your indigestion."

"All right. Wait a moment; I'll put my coat on...."

"I never pass a set of street-sweepers without buttoning up," said
Harding, as they went out of the Temple into the Strand. "The glazed
shoes I don't mind, but the tie is too painfully significant."

"The old signs of City," said Thompson, as a begging woman rose from
a doorstep, and stretched forth a miserable arm and hand.

About the closed wine-shops and oyster-bars of the Haymarket a shadow
of the dissipation of the night seemed still to linger; and a curious
bent figure passed picking with a spiked stick cigar-ends out of
the gutter; significant it was, and so too was the starving dog
which the man drove from a bone. The city was mean and squalid in
the morning, and conveyed a sense of derision and reproach--the
sweep-carriage-road of Regent Street; the Royal Academy, pretentious,
aristocratic; the Green Park still presenting some of the graces of
a preceding century. There were but three cabs on the rank. The
market-carts rolled along long Piccadilly, the great dray-horses
shuffling, raising little clouds of dust in the barren street, the
men dozing amid the vegetables.

They were now at Hyde Park Corner. Thompson spoke of the
_improvements_--the breaking up of the town into open spaces; but he
doubted i