No eye surveying this procession would have paused for a moment on Thomas
Bird. In costume there was nothing to distinguish him from hundreds of
rather shabby clerks who passed along with their out-of-fashion chimney-pot
and badly rolled umbrella; his gait was that of a man who takes no exercise
beyond the daily walk to and from his desk; the casual glance could see
nothing in his features but patient dullness tending to good humour. He
might be thirty, he might be forty--impossible to decide. Yet when a ray of
sunshine fell upon him, and he lifted his eyes to the eastward promise,
there shone in his countenance something one might vainly have sought
through the streaming concourse of which Thomas Bird was an unregarded
atom. For him, it appeared, the struggling sunlight had a message of hope.
Trouble cleared from his face; he smiled unconsciously and quickened his
steps.
For fifteen years he had walked to and fro over Blackfriars Bridge, leaving
his home in Camberwell at eight o'clock and reaching it again at seven.
Fate made him a commercial clerk as his father before him; he earned more
than enough for his necessities, but seemed to have reached the limit of
promotion, for he had no influential friends, and he lacked the capacity to
rise by his own efforts.
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