He was given two and nine. His first tip! Threepence.
It was a busy day. He had only half an hour to wait on the stand which he had chosen for his headquarters. He drove home at night worn out and sleepy.
The excitement did not last. Very soon he hardly noticed his fares; a stick or an umbrella raised in the street, a whistle blown by a servant, and off he sped, shipped his freight, and discharged it uninterested. From his district in the morning the gentlemen went to their business; later in the day their ladies went to the shops; in the evening both went about their pleasures. Occasionally he was taken out to the suburbs, far west or north, but for the most part it was routine work, varied in the evenings, sometimes, with the conveyance of brilliantly-attired young men and women from a restaurant to a theater in the West End, or of dubious couples to dubious habitations.
And he was happy. The monotony was a relief. It never ceased to be a source of pride to him to keep the paint and brass of his car gleaming and his engine sweet and in tune. Always it was a delight to him at night, when the traffic was abated, to let the throttle open and send the car spinning and humming over the shining streets. If he lost interest in his fares, he never weakened in his joy in the streets with their color and activity, as changing as the sky or as the water in the river, their music swelling through the day, to almost every hour its individual harmony, a music growing and falling with the seasons: vigor and hope in October; in the winter a humorous desperation out of which grew miraculously the spring, and that again was lost in the maddening rout of June and then the slackness and the excited pleasure-hunting of the summer months when the genius of the city flees before the horde of aliens and visitors who come to gape and peer and see the sights. He was happy, and most of all he loved his independence, to be free of organization of any kind. Company? The car was company. He and it worked together. Here was no uncertainty, no fumbling. The day's work was marked out and must be well done. There was always satisfaction in it and never compromise, never the sense of being driven on by some obscure and undirected energy other than his own that had so often overcome him in Thrigsby. And because his mind and body were engaged in the discipline of skilled work, his intellect, his imagination began to grow, to reach out, to desire to use their powers upon all that he observed and thought and felt. A little joy grew in him slowly and brought him at first to a dreaming, wistful mood wherein desires expanded of which he did not begin to be conscious until spring airs stirred in London.