The only person whom Godwin regarded with feeling akin to this was Mr.Gunnery, but the geologist found no favour with Mrs.Peak, and thus he involuntarily helped to widen the gap between the young man and his relatives.

Nor had the intimacies of school time supplied Godwin with friendships for the years to come; his Twybridge class-fellows no longer interested him, nor did they care to continue his acquaintance.

One was articled to a solicitor; one was learning the drug-trade in his father's shop; another had begun to deal in corn; the rest were scattered about England, as students or salary-earners.

The dominion of the commonplace had absorbed them, all and sundry; they were the stuff which destiny uses for its every-day purposes, to keep the world a-rolling.
So that Godwin had no ties which bound him strongly to any district.

He could not call himself a Londoner; for, though born in Westminster, he had grown to consciousness on the outskirts of Greenwich, and remembered but dimly some of the London streets, and a few places of public interest to which his father had taken him.