Clothes Trade prove themselves commercial. Their ancient chivalry seems to desert them in this line of business, and something material creeps into their gallant hearts. Lippy had reproached himself, Lippy had been tortured as he had seen the lounger's figure slowly and doubtfully receding burdened with a thing of so much value.
With the disappearance of the Green Overcoat the supernatural warnings (for which he despised himself) had disappeared, and he remembered only its very mundane value. He could not bear the loss, and he had followed.
The lounger James turned round startled, and instinctively thrust the bundle towards the man who, he instinctively knew, had repented of his first decision. Lippy seized it, guiltily, furtively, violently, and without a word he was on his way back to his shop. But as for James, he went his way noting suddenly the pleasantness of the morning; that excellent Watcher and Checker under the Labour Exchange of Ormeston, that Pillar of Free Labour, that Good Servant of the State, that member of our New Bureaucracy of Social Reform, was himself again. He went forward whistling, and he found it in a few
