His father continued, as though it had been for his own pleasure.
The scenes, the hours returned with a vividness and actuality that thronged the room.
He could see Mason Street with its grocer's shop at the corner, its Baths and Public Library, the sudden little black dips into the areas as the houses followed one another, the lamp-post opposite their window that had always excited him because it leaned inwards a little as though it would presently tumble.

He remembered the fat short cook with the pink cotton dress who wheezed and blew so when she had to climb the stairs.

He remembered the rooms that would seem bare enough to him now, he supposed, but were then filled with exciting possibilities--a little round brown table, his mother's work-box with mother-of-pearl shells upon the cover, a stuffed bird with bright blue feathers under a glass case, a screen with coloured pictures of battles and horses and elephants casted upon it.

He remembered the exact sound that the tinkling bell made when it summoned them to meals, he remembered the especial smell of beef and carpet that was the dining-room, he remembered a little door of coloured glass on the first landing, a cupboard that had in it sugar and apples, a room full of old books piled high all about the floor upon the dry and dusty boards ...

a thousand other things came crowding around him.
Then, as his father's voice continued, out from the background there came his own figure, a small, pale, excited boy in short trousers.
He was immensely excited--that was the principal thing.