CHAPTER IV
Why Harris considers alarm clocks unnecessary in a family--Socialinstinct of the young--A child's thoughts about the morning--Thesleepless watchman--The mystery of him--His over anxiety--Nightthoughts--The sort of work one does before breakfast--The good sheep andthe bad--Disadvantages of being virtuous--Harris's new stove beginsbadly--The daily out-going of my Uncle Podger--The elderly city manconsidered as a racer--We arrive in London--We talk the language of thetraveller.
George came down on Tuesday evening, and slept at Harris's place. Wethought this a better arrangement than his own suggestion, which was thatwe should call for him on our way and "pick him up." Picking George upin the morning means picking him out of bed to begin with, and shakinghim awake--in itself an exhausting effort with which to commence the day;helping him find his things and finish his packing; and then waiting forhim while he eats his breakfast, a tedious entertainment from thespectator's point of view, full of wearisome repetition.
I knew that if he slept at "Beggarbush" he would be up in time; I haveslept there myself, and I know what happens. About the middle of thenight, as you judge, though in reality it may be somewhat later, you arestartled out of your first sleep by what sounds like a rush of cavalryalong the passage, just outside your door. Your half-awakenedintelligence fluctuates between burglars, the Day of Judgment, and a gasexplosion. You sit up in bed and listen intently. You are not keptwaiting long; the next moment a door is violently slammed, and somebody,or something, is evidently coming downstairs on a tea-tray.
"I told you so," says a voice outside, and immediately some hardsubstance, a head one would say from the ring of it, rebounds against thepanel of your door.
By this time you are charging madly round the room for your clothes.Nothing is where you put it overnight, the articles most essential havedisappeared entirely; and meanwhile the murder, or revolution, orwhatever it is, continues unchecked. You pause for a moment, with yourhead under the wardrobe, where you think you can see your slippers, tolisten to a steady, monotonous thumping upon a distant door. The victim,you presume, has taken refuge there; they mean to have him out and finishhim. Will you be in time? The knocking ceases, and a voice, sweetlyreassuring in its gentle plaintiveness, asks meekly:
"Pa, may I get up?"
You do not hear the other voice, but the responses are:
"No, it was only the bath--no, she ain't really hurt,--only wet, youknow. Yes, ma, I'll tell 'em what you say. No, it was a pure accident.Yes; good-night, papa."
Then the same voice, exerting itself so as to be heard in a distant partof the house, remarks:
"You've got to come upstairs again. Pa says it isn't time yet to getup."
You return to bed, and lie listening to somebody being dragged upstairs,evidently against their will. By a thoughtful arrangement the sparerooms at "Beggarbush" are exactly underneath the nurseries. The samesomebody, you conclude, still offering the most creditable opposition, isbeing put back into bed. You can follow the contest with muchexactitude, because every time the body is flung down upon the springmattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort of jump; whileevery time the body succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware bythe thud upon the floor. After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe thebed collapses; and you drift back into sleep. But the next moment, orwhat seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under theconsciousness of a presence. The door is being held ajar, and foursolemn faces, piled one on top of the other, are peering at you, asthough you were some natural curiosity kept in this particular room.Seeing you awake, the top face, walking calmly over the other three,comes in and sits on the bed in a friendly attitude.
"Oh!" it says, "we didn't know you were awake. I've been awake sometime."
"So I gather," you reply, shortly.
"Pa doesn't like us to get up too early," it continues. "He sayseverybody else in the house is liable to be disturbed if we get up. So,of course, we mustn't."
The tone is that of gentle resignation. It is instinct with the spiritof virtuous pride, arising from the consciousness of self-sacrifice.
"Don't you call this being up?" you suggest.
"Oh, no; we're not really up, you know, because we're not properlydressed." The fact is self-evident. "Pa's always very tired in themorning," the voice continues; "of course, that's because he works hardall day. Are you ever tired in the morning?"
At this point he turns and notices, for the first time, that the threeother children have also entered, and are sitting in a semi-circle on thefloor. From their attitude it is clear they have mistaken the wholething for one of the slower forms of entertainment, some comic lecture orconjuring exhibition, and are waiting patiently for you to get out of bedand do something. It shocks him, the idea of their being in the guest'sbedchamber. He peremptorily orders them out. They do not answer him,they do not argue; in dead silence, and with one accord they fall uponhim. All you can see from the bed is a confused tangle of waving armsand legs, suggestive of an intoxicated octopus trying to find bottom. Nota word is spoken; that seems to be the etiquette of the thing. If youare sleeping in your pyjamas, you spring from the bed, and only add tothe confusion; if you are wearing a less showy garment, you stop whereyou are and shout commands, which are utterly unheeded. The simplestplan is to leave it to the eldest boy. He does get them out after awhile, and closes the door upon them. It re-opens immediately, and one,generally Muriel, is shot back into the room. She enters as from acatapult. She is handicapped by having long hair, which can be used as aconvenient handle. Evidently aware of this natural disadvantage, sheclutches it herself tightly in one hand, and punches with the other. Heopens the door again, and cleverly uses her as a battering-ram againstthe wall of those without. You can hear the dull crash as her headenters among them, and scatters them. When the victory is complete, hecomes back and resumes his seat on the bed. There is no bitterness abouthim; he has forgotten the whole incident.
"I like the morning," he says, "don't you?"
"Some mornings," you agree, "are all right; others are not so peaceful."
He takes no notice of your exception; a far-away look steals over hissomewhat ethereal face.
"I should like to die in the morning," he says; "everything is sobeautiful then."
"Well," you answer, "perhaps you will, if your father ever invites anirritable man to come and sleep here, and doesn't warn him beforehand."
He descends from his contemplative mood, and becomes himself again.
"It's jolly in the garden," he suggests; "you wouldn't like to get up andhave a game of cricket, would you?"
It was not the idea with which you went to bed, but now, as things haveturned out, it seems as good a plan as lying there hopelessly awake; andyou agree.
You learn, later in the day, that the explanation of the proceeding isthat you, unable to sleep, woke up early in the morning, and thought youwould like a game of cricket. The children, taught to be ever courteousto guests, felt it their duty to humour you. Mrs. Harris remarks atbreakfast that at least you might have seen to it that the children wereproperly dressed before you took them out; while Harris points out toyou, pathetically, how, by your one morning's example and encouragement,you have undone his labour of months.
On this Wednesday morning, George, it seems, clamoured to get up at aquarter-past five, and persuaded them to let him teach them cyclingtricks round the cucumber frames on Harris's new wheel. Even Mrs.Harris, however, did not blame George on this occasion; she feltintuitively the idea could not have been entirely his.
It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of avoidingblame at the expense of a friend and comrade. One and all they arehonesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own misdeeds. Itsimply is, that is how the thing presents itself to their understanding.When you explain to them that you had no original intention of getting upat five o'clock in the morning to play cricket on the croquet lawn, or tomimic the history o
f the early Church by shooting with a cross-bow atdolls tied to a tree; that as a matter of fact, left to your owninitiative, you would have slept peacefully till roused in Christianfashion with a cup of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished, secondlyapologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite. In the present instance,waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at alittle before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to theaccidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom window,the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his uprising wastheir own. As the eldest boy said:
"We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day, beforehim, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up. I blame myselfentirely."
But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and besides, asHarris and I agreed, it was good training for George. In the BlackForest we should be up at five every morning; that we had determined on.Indeed, George himself had suggested half-past four, but Harris and I hadargued that five would be early enough as an average; that would enableus to be on our machines by six, and to break the back of our journeybefore the heat of the day set in. Occasionally we might start a littleearlier, but not as a habit.
I myself was up that morning at five. This was earlier than I hadintended. I had said to myself on going to sleep, "Six o'clock, sharp!"
There are men I know who can wake themselves at any time to the minute.They say to themselves literally, as they lay their heads upon thepillow, "Four-thirty," "Four-forty-five," or "Five-fifteen," as the casemay be; and as the clock strikes they open their eyes. It is verywonderful this; the more one dwells upon it, the greater the mysterygrows. Some Ego within us, acting quite independently of our consciousself, must be capable of counting the hours while we sleep. Unaided byclock or sun, or any other medium known to our five senses, it keepswatch through the darkness. At the exact moment it whispers "Time!" andwe awake. The work of an old riverside fellow I once talked with calledhim to be out of bed each morning half an hour before high tide. He toldme that never once had he overslept himself by a minute. Latterly, henever even troubled to work out the tide for himself. He would lie downtired, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and each morning at a different hourthis ghostly watchman, true as the tide itself, would silently call him.Did the man's spirit haunt through the darkness the muddy river stairs;or had it knowledge of the ways of Nature? Whatever the process, the manhimself was unconscious of it.
In my own case my inward watchman is, perhaps, somewhat out of practice.He does his best; but he is over-anxious; he worries himself, and losescount. I say to him, maybe, "Five-thirty, please;" and he wakes me witha start at half-past two. I look at my watch. He suggests that,perhaps, I forgot to wind it up. I put it to my ear; it is still going.He thinks, maybe, something has happened to it; he is confident himselfit is half-past five, if not a little later. To satisfy him, I put on apair of slippers and go downstairs to inspect the dining-room clock. Whathappens to a man when he wanders about the house in the middle of thenight, clad in a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, there is no needto recount; most men know by experience. Everything--especiallyeverything with a sharp corner--takes a cowardly delight in hitting him.When you are wearing a pair of stout boots, things get out of your way;when you venture among furniture in woolwork slippers and no socks, itcomes at you and kicks you. I return to bed bad tempered, and refusingto listen to his further absurd suggestion that all the clocks in thehouse have entered into a conspiracy against me, take half an hour to getto sleep again. From four to five he wakes me every ten minutes. I wishI had never said a word to him about the thing. At five o'clock he goesto sleep himself, worn out, and leaves it to the girl, who does it halfan hour later than usual.
On this particular Wednesday he worried me to such an extent, that I gotup at five simply to be rid of him. I did not know what to do withmyself. Our train did not leave till eight; all our luggage had beenpacked and sent on the night before, together with the bicycles, toFenchurch Street Station. I went into my study; I thought I would put inan hour's writing. The early morning, before one has breakfasted, isnot, I take it, a good season for literary effort. I wrote threeparagraphs of a story, and then read them over to myself. Some unkindthings have been said about my work; but nothing has yet been writtenwhich would have done justice to those three paragraphs. I threw theminto the waste-paper basket, and sat trying to remember what, if any,charitable institutions provided pensions for decayed authors.
To escape from this train of reflection, I put a golf-ball in my pocket,and selecting a driver, strolled out into the paddock. A couple of sheepwere browsing there, and they followed and took a keen interest in mypractice. The one was a kindly, sympathetic old party. I do not thinkshe understood the game; I think it was my doing this innocent thing soearly in the morning that appealed to her. At every stroke I made shebleated:
"Go-o-o-d, go-o-o-d ind-e-e-d!"
She seemed as pleased as if she had done it herself.
As for the other one, she was a cantankerous, disagreeable old thing, asdiscouraging to me as her friend was helpful.
"Ba-a-ad, da-a-a-m ba-a-a-d!" was her comment on almost every stroke. Asa matter of fact, some were really excellent strokes; but she did it justto be contradictory, and for the sake of irritating. I could see that.
By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the goodsheep on the nose. And at that the bad sheep laughed--laughed distinctlyand undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her friend stood gluedto the ground, too astonished to move, she changed her note for the firsttime and bleated:
"Go-o-o-d, ve-e-ry go-o-o-d! Be-e-e-est sho-o-o-ot he-e-e's ma-a-a-de!"
I would have given half-a-crown if it had been she I had hit instead ofthe other one. It is ever the good and amiable who suffer in this world.
I had wasted more time than I had intended in the paddock, and whenEthelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the breakfast wason the table, I remembered that I had not shaved. It vexes Ethelberthamy shaving quickly. She fears that to outsiders it may suggest a poor-spirited attempt at suicide, and that in consequence it may get about theneighbourhood that we are not happy together. As a further argument, shehas also hinted that my appearance is not of the kind that can be trifledwith.
On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long farewellof Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down. But I shouldhave liked more opportunity to say a few farewell words of advice to thechildren, especially as regards my fishing rod, which they will persistin using for cricket stumps; and I hate having to run for a train.Quarter of a mile from the station I overtook George and Harris; theywere also running. In their case--so Harris informed me, jerkily, whilewe trotted side by side--it was the new kitchen stove that was to blame.This was the first morning they had tried it, and from some cause orother it had blown up the kidneys and scalded the cook. He said he hopedthat by the time we returned they would have got more used to it.
We caught the train by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is, andreflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in thecarriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my UnclePodger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would start fromEaling Common by the nine-thirteen train to Moorgate Street.
From my Uncle Podger's house to the railway station was eight minutes'walk. What my uncle always said was:
"Allow yourself a quarter of an hour, and take it easily."
What he always did was to start five minutes before the time and run. Ido not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb. Many stout Citygentlemen lived at Ealing in those days--I believe some live therestill--and caught early trains to Town. They all started late; they allcarried a black bag and a newspaper in one hand, and an umbrella in theother; and for the last quarter of a mile to the station, wet or fine,they all ran.
Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chie
fly and errand boys, withnow and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather on thecommon of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the mostdeserving. It was not a showy spectacle. They did not run well, theydid not even run fast; but they were earnest, and they did their best.The exhibition appealed less to one's sense of art than to one's naturaladmiration for conscientious effort.
Occasionally a little harmless betting would take place among the crowd.
"Two to one agin the old gent in the white weskit!"
"Ten to one on old Blowpipes, bar he don't roll over hisself 'fore 'egets there!"
"Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!"--a nickname bestowed by a youth ofentomological tastes upon a certain retired military neighbour of myuncle's,--a gentleman of imposing appearance when stationary, but apt tocolour highly under exercise.
My uncle and the others would write to the _Ealing Press_ complainingbitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the editorwould add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among the LowerOrders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs. But no good everresulted.
It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troublescame to him at the last moment. The first thing he would do afterbreakfast would be to lose his newspaper. We always knew when UnclePodger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignationwith which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general. Itnever occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself:
"I am a careless old man. I lose everything: I never know where I haveput anything. I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself. Inthis respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me. I mustset to work and reform myself."
On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convincedhimself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else's fault inthe house but his own.
"I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!" he would exclaim.
From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded byconjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate him.
"Could you have left it in the garden?" my aunt would suggest.
"What should I want to leave it in the garden for? I don't want a paperin the garden; I want the paper in the train with me."
"You haven't put it in your pocket?"
"God bless the woman! Do you think I should be standing here at fiveminutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while? Doyou think I'm a fool?"
Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere apaper neatly folded.
"I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatchingat it savagely.
He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he wouldpause, speechless with sense of injury.
"What's the matter?" aunt would ask.
"The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to shout,throwing the paper down upon the table.
If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a change.But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on Tuesday; then itwould be Saturday's.
We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting onit. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness thatcomes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band ofhopeless idiots.
"All the time, right in front of your noses--!" He would not finish thesentence; he prided himself on his self-control.
This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of myAunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye to him.
My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next door,without taking a tender farewell of every inmate. One never knew, shewould say, what might happen.
One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this wasnoticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation, would scatterwith a whoop to find it. Immediately they were gone it would turn up byitself from somewhere quite near, always with the most reasonableexplanation for its absence; and would at once start off after the othersto explain to them that it was found. In this way, five minutes at leastwould be taken up in everybody's looking for everybody else, which wasjust sufficient time to allow my uncle to find his umbrella and lose hishat. Then, at last, the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-roomclock would commence to strike nine. It possessed a cold, penetratingchime that always had the effect of confusing my uncle. In hisexcitement he would kiss some of the children twice over, pass by others,forget whom he had kissed and whom he hadn't, and have to begin all overagain. He used to say he believed they mixed themselves up on purpose,and I am not prepared to maintain that the charge was altogether false.To add to his troubles, one child always had a sticky face; and thatchild would always be the most affectionate.
If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out withsome tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes slow, andof his having been late for school the previous day in consequence. Thiswould send my uncle rushing impetuously down to the gate, where he wouldrecollect that he had with him neither his bag nor his umbrella. All thechildren that my aunt could not stop would charge after him, two of themstruggling for the umbrella, the others surging round the bag. And whenthey returned we would discover on the hall table the most importantthing of all that he had forgotten, and wondered what he would say aboutit when he came home.
We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded to putGeorge's experiment into operation. Opening the book at the chapterentitled "At the Cab Rank," we walked up to a hansom, raised our hats,and wished the driver "Good-morning."
This man was not to be outdone in politeness by any foreigner, real orimitation. Calling to a friend named "Charles" to "hold the steed," hesprang from his box, and returned to us a bow, that would have donecredit to Mr. Turveydrop himself. Speaking apparently in the name of thenation, he welcomed us to England, adding a regret that Her Majesty wasnot at the moment in London.
We could not reply to him in kind. Nothing of this sort had beenanticipated by the book. We called him "coachman," at which he againbowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have the goodness todrive us to the Westminster Bridge road.
He laid his hand upon his heart, and said the pleasure would be his.
Taking the third sentence in the chapter, George asked him what his farewould be.
The question, as introducing a sordid element into the conversation,seemed to hurt his feelings. He said he never took money fromdistinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir--a diamond scarf pin, agold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort by which he could rememberus.
As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather toofar in the cabman's direction, we climbed in without further parley, andwere driven away amid cheers. We stopped the cab at a boot shop a littlepast Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of place we wanted. It wasone of those overfed shops that the moment their shutters are taken downin the morning disgorge their goods all round them. Boxes of boots stoodpiled on the pavement or in the gutter opposite. Boots hung in festoonsabout its doors and windows. Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine,bearing bunches of black and brown boots. Inside, the shop was a bowerof boots. The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammeropening a new crate full of boots.
George raised his hat, and said "Good-morning."
The man did not even turn round. He struck me from the first as adisagreeable man. He grunted something which might have been"Good-morning," or might not, and went on with his work.
George said: "I have been recommended to your shop by my friend, Mr. X."
In response, the man should have said: "Mr. X. is a most worthygentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend ofhis."
What he did say was: "Don't know him; never heard of him."
This was disconcerting. The book gave three or four methods of b
uyingboots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," asbeing of all the most courtly. You talked a good deal with theshopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendshipand understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefullyinto the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots,"cheap and good." This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothingfor the niceties of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one tocome to business with brutal directness. George abandoned "Mr. X," andturning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not ahappy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made toany bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifledas we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positiveimbecility. It ran:--"One has told me that you have here boots forsale."
For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked atus. He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice. He said:
"What d'ye think I keep boots for--to smell 'em?"
He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as theyproceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast.
"What d'ye think I am," he continued, "a boot collector? What d'ye thinkI'm running this shop for--my health? D'ye think I love the boots, andcan't bear to part with a pair? D'ye think I hang 'em about here to lookat 'em? Ain't there enough of 'em? Where d'ye think you are--in aninternational exhibition of boots? What d'ye think these boots are--ahistorical collection? Did you ever hear of a man keeping a boot shopand not selling boots? D'ye think I decorate the shop with 'em to makeit look pretty? What d'ye take me for--a prize idiot?"
I have always maintained that these conversation books are never of anyreal use. What we wanted was some English equivalent for the well-knownGerman idiom: "Behalten Sie Ihr Haar auf."
Nothing of the sort was to be found in the book from beginning to end.However, I will do George the credit to admit he chose the very bestsentence that was to be found therein and applied it. He said:.
"I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to showme. Till then, adieu!"
With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man standingin the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing remarks to us. Whathe said, I did not hear, but the passers-by appeared to find itinteresting.
George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the experimentafresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom slippers. But wepersuaded him to postpone their purchase until our arrival in someforeign city, where the tradespeople are no doubt more inured to thissort of talk, or else more naturally amiable. On the subject of the hat,however, he was adamant. He maintained that without that he could nottravel, and, accordingly, we pulled up at a small shop in the BlackfriarsRoad.
The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man, and hehelped us rather than hindered us.
When George asked him in the words of the book, "Have you any hats?" hedid not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully scratched his chin.
"Hats," said he. "Let me think. Yes"--here a smile of positive pleasurebroke over his genial countenance--"yes, now I come to think of it, Ibelieve I have a hat. But, tell me, why do you ask me?"
George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a travellingcap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was to be a "goodcap."
The man's face fell.
"Ah," he remarked, "there, I am afraid, you have me. Now, if you hadwanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked for it; a cap good fornothing but to clean windows with, I could have found you the very thing.But a good cap--no; we don't keep them. But wait a minute," hecontinued,--on seeing the disappointment that spread over George'sexpressive countenance, "don't be in a hurry. I have a cap here"--hewent to a drawer and opened it--"it is not a good cap, but it is not sobad as most of the caps I sell."
He brought it forward, extended on his palm.
"What do you think of that?" he asked. "Could you put up with that?"
George fitted it on before the glass, and, choosing another remark fromthe book, said:
"This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider thatit becomes me?"
The man stepped back and took a bird's-eye view.
"Candidly," he replied, "I can't say that it does."
He turned from George, and addressed himself to Harris and myself.
"Your friend's beauty," said he, "I should describe as elusive. It isthere, but you can easily miss it. Now, in that cap, to my mind, you domiss it."
At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun withthis particular man. He said:
"That is all right. We don't want to lose the train. How much?"
Answered the man: "The price of that cap, sir, which, in my opinion, istwice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six. Would you like it wrappedup in brown paper, sir, or in white?"
George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-sixin-silver, and went out. Harris and I followed.
At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five shillings. Hemade us another courtly bow, and begged us to remember him to the Emperorof Austria.
Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game by twopoints to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw the bookout of window.
We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with the tideat twelve dropped down the river.