The London lad was more self-conscious, had a more glib way of expressing his convictions, but even he hid his purpose in the war under a covering of irony and cynical jests. It was the spirit of the old city and the pride of it which helped him to suffer, and in his daydreams was the clanging of buses from Charing Cross to the Bank, the lights of the embankment reflected in the dark river, the back yard where he had kept his bicycle, or the suburban garden where he had watered his mother’s plants⁠ ⁠… London! Good old London!⁠ ⁠… His heart ached for it sometimes when, as sentry, he stared across the parapet to the barbed wire in No Man’s Land.