Two circumstances contributed to this. The
first one was the ever-present difficulty in these busy days of
synchronizing an arrival. A prudent man allows himself time for being
pushed off the first half-dozen omnibuses and trusts to surging up
with the seventh wave. I was so unlucky as to cleave my way on to the
first 'bus of all, with the result that when I descended from it I was
a good ten minutes early. Well, that was bad enough. But, just as I
was approaching the door, I realized that my calculations had been
made for a one o'clock lunch. It was now ten to one; I had forty
minutes in hand.
It is very difficult to know what to do with forty minutes in the
middle of Piccadilly, particularly when it is raining. Until a year
ago I had had a club there, and I had actually resigned from it (how
little one foresees the future!) on the plea that I never had occasion
to use it. I felt that I would cheerfully have paid the subscription
for the rest of my life in order to have had the loan of its roof at
that moment.
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