Somehow Peter could never fall into the normal Bloombury attitude of thinking that if you had hip disease, your life was bound to be different from everybody's and you might as well say so right out, flat-footed, and be done with it.
With all this, finally he was got off to the city in the wake of Mr.
Greenslet, and the first discovery he made there was that outside of Siegel Brothers, and a collarless man with a discouraged moustache who appeared in the hall of his lodging-house when the rent was due, he was practically invisible.

As he went up and down the stairs sodden with scrub water which never by any possible chance left them scrubbed, nobody spoke to him.

Nobody in the street saw him walking to and fro in his young loneliness.

There were men passing there with faces like Mr.
Dassonville's, keen and competent, and lovely ladies in soft becoming wraps and bright winged hats--such hats! Peter would like to have hailed some of these as one immeasurably behind but still in the way, seized of that precious inward quality which manifests itself in competency and brightness.

He would have liked to feel them looking on friendlily at his business of becoming rich; but he remained, as far as any word from them was concerned, completely invisible.