Already the young man had wheeled it into the shop.
"Take it," he insisted.

"What does it matter?
Maraton is here!" Away again, this time on foot, along the sun-baked pavements, through courts and alleys into a narrow, busy street in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch.

He stopped at last before a factory and looked tentatively up at the windows.

Through the opened panes came the constant click of sewing machines, the smell of cloth, the vision of many heads bent over their work.

He stood where he was for a time and watched.