Page 223 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

XXXIV

he next morning, our money being at an end, Paddy
Tand I set out for the spike. We went southward by the
Old Kent Road, making for Cromley; we could not go to a
London spike, for Paddy had been in one recently and did
not care to risk going again. It was a sixteen-mile walk over
asphalt, blistering to the heels, and we were acutely hungry.
Paddy browsed the pavement, laying up a store of cigarette
ends against his time in the spike. In the end his persever-
ance was rewarded, for he picked up a penny. We bought a
large piece of stale bread, and devoured it as we walked.
When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go to the
spike, and we walked several miles farther, to a plantation
beside a meadow, where one could sit down. It was a regular
caravanserai of tramps—one could tell it by the worn grass
and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that they had left
behind. Other tramps were arriving by ones and twos. It
was jolly autumn weather. Near by, a deep bed of tansies
was growing; it seems to me that even now I can smell the
sharp reek of those tansies, warring with the reek of tramps.
In the meadow two carthorse colts, raw sienna colour with
white manes and tails, were nibbling at a gate. We. sprawled
about on the ground, sweaty and exhausted. Someone man-
aged to find dry sticks and get a fire going, and we all had
milkless tea out of a tin ‘drum’ which was passed round.

Down and Out in Paris and London