He looked down at the tiny gutter at his feet between the asphalted pavement and the road. The lamplight shone upon this gutter, and he observed a torn piece of newspaper lying in it⁠—a headline of the Western Gazette ⁠—and just tilted against the edge of this headline he saw an empty greenish-coloured tin. He could even read the words upon that torn bit of paper⁠—printed in large, heavy type. “France distr⁠ ⁠… land.” “France distrusts England,” he repeated to himself; and then “Lyle’s Golden Syrup.” He could read that , without reading it! Much sweetness had he, in his time, watched Gerda imbibing from such a greenish-coloured receptacle!

“Does Mattie make ’em give Olwen her ‘golden syrup’ out at Pond Cottage? This is reality,” he thought.