Why Harris considers alarm clocks unnecessary in a family--Social
instinct of the young--A child's thoughts about the morning--The
sleepless watchman--The mystery of him--His over anxiety--Night
thoughts--The sort of work one does before breakfast--The good sheep and
the bad--Disadvantages of being virtuous--Harris's new stove begins
badly--The daily out-going of my Uncle Podger--The elderly city man
considered as a racer--We arrive in London--We talk the language of the
traveller.
George came down on Tuesday evening, and slept at Harris's place. We
thought this a better arrangement than his own suggestion, which was that
we should call for him on our way and "pick him up." Picking George up
in the morning means picking him out of bed to begin with, and shaking
him awake--in itself an exhausting effort with which to commence the day;
helping him find his things and finish his packing; and then waiting for
him while he eats his breakfast, a tedious entertainment from the
spectator's point of view, full of wearisome repetition.
I knew that if he slept at "Beggarbush" he would be up in time; I have
slept there myself, and I know what happens. About the middle of the
night, as you judge, though in reality it may be somewhat later, you are
startled out of your first sleep by what sounds like a rush of cavalry
along the passage, just outside your door. Your half-awakened
intelligence fluctuates between burglars, the Day of Judgment, and a gas
explosion. You sit up in bed and listen intently. You are not kept
waiting 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 hard
substance, a head one would say from the ring of it, rebounds against the
panel 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 have
disappeared entirely; and meanwhile the murder, or revolution, or
whatever it is, continues unchecked. You pause for a moment, with your
head under the wardrobe, where you think you can see your slippers, to
listen to a steady, monotonous thumping upon a distant door. The victim,
you presume, has taken refuge there; they mean to have him out and finish
him. Will you be in time? The knocking ceases, and a voice, sweetly
reassuring 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, you
know. 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 part
of the house, remarks:
"You've got to come upstairs again. Pa says it isn't time yet to get
up."
You return to bed, and lie listening to somebody being dragged upstairs,
evidently against their will. By a thoughtful arrangement the spare
rooms at "Beggarbush" are exactly underneath the nurseries. The same
somebody, you conclude, still offering the most creditable opposition, is
being put back into bed. You can follow the contest with much
exactitude, because every time the body is flung down upon the spring
mattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort of jump; while
every time the body succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware by
the thud upon the floor. After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe the
bed collapses; and you drift back into sleep. But the next moment, or
what seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under the
consciousness of a presence. The door is being held ajar, and four
solemn faces, piled one on top of the other, are peering at you, as
though 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 some
time."
"So I gather," you reply, shortly.
"Pa doesn't like us to get up too early," it continues. "He says
everybody 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 spirit
of 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 properly
dressed." The fact is self-evident. "Pa's always very tired in the
morning," the voice continues; "of course, that's because he works hard
all day. Are you ever tired in the morning?"
At this point he turns and notices, for the first time, that the three
other children have also entered, and are sitting in a semi-circle on the
floor. From their attitude it is clear they have mistaken the whole
thing for one of the slower forms of entertainment, some comic lecture or
conjuring exhibition, and are waiting patiently for you to get out of bed
and do something. It shocks him, the idea of their being in the guest's
bedchamber. He peremptorily orders them out. They do not answer him,
they do not argue; in dead silence, and with one accord they fall upon
him. All you can see from the bed is a confused tangle of waving arms
and legs, suggestive of an intoxicated octopus trying to find bottom. Not
a word is spoken; that seems to be the etiquette of the thing. If you
are sleeping in your pyjamas, you spring from the bed, and only add to
the confusion; if you are wearing a less showy garment, you stop where
you are and shout commands, which are utterly unheeded. The simplest
plan is to leave it to the eldest boy. He does get them out after a
while, and closes the door upon them. It re-opens immediately, and one,
generally Muriel, is shot back into the room. She enters as from a
catapult. She is handicapped by having long hair, which can be used as a
convenient handle. Evidently aware of this natural disadvantage, she
clutches it herself tightly in one hand, and punches with the other. He
opens the door again, and cleverly uses her as a battering-ram against
the wall of those without. You can hear the dull crash as her head
enters among them, and scatters them. When the victory is complete, he
comes back and resumes his seat on the bed. There is no bitterness about
him; 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 his
somewhat ethereal face.
"I should like to die in the morning," he says; "everything is so
beautiful then."
"Well," you answer, "perhaps you will, if your father ever invites an
irritable 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 and
have a game of cricket, would you?"
It was not the idea with which you went to bed, but now, as things have
turned out, it seems as good a plan as lying there hopelessly awake; and
you agree.
You learn, later in the day, that the explanation of the proceeding is
that you, unable to sleep, woke up early in the morning, and thought you
would like a game of cricket. The children, taught to be ever courteous
to guests, felt it their duty to humour you. Mrs. Harris remarks at
breakfast that at least you might have seen to it that the children were
properly dressed before you took them out; while Harris points out to
you, 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 a
quarter-past five, and persuaded them to let him teach them cycling
tricks round the cucumber frames on Harris's new wheel. Even Mrs.
Harris, however, did not blame George on this occasion; she felt
intuitively the idea could not have been entirely his.
It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of avoiding
blame at the expense of a friend and comrade. One and all they are
honesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own misdeeds. It
simply is, that is how the thing presents itself to their understanding.
When you explain to them that you had no original intention of getting up
at five o'clock in the morning to play cricket on the croquet lawn, or to
mimic the history of the early Church by shooting with a cross-bow at
dolls tied to a tree; that as a matter of fact, left to your own
initiative, you would have slept peacefully till roused in Christian
fashion with a cup of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished, secondly
apologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite. In the present instance,
waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at a
little before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to the
accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom window,
the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his uprising was
their own. As the eldest boy said:
"We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day before
him, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up. I blame myself
entirely."
But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and besides, as
Harris and I agreed, it was good training for George. In the Black
Forest 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 had
argued that five would be early enough as an average; that would enable
us to be on our machines by six, and to break the back of our journey
before the heat of the day set in. Occasionally we might start a little
earlier, but not as a habit.
I myself was up that morning at five. This was earlier than I had
intended. 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 the
pillow, "Four-thirty," "Four-forty-five," or "Five-fifteen," as the case
may be; and as the clock strikes they open their eyes. It is very
wonderful this; the more one dwells upon it, the greater the mystery
grows. Some Ego within us, acting quite independently of our conscious
self, must be capable of counting the hours while we sleep. Unaided by
clock or sun, or any other medium known to our five senses, it keeps
watch through the darkness. At the exact moment it whispers "Time!" and
we awake. The work of an old riverside fellow I once talked with called
him to be out of bed each morning half an hour before high tide. He told
me that never once had he overslept himself by a minute. Latterly, he
never even troubled to work out the tide for himself. He would lie down
tired, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and each morning at a different hour
this 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 man
himself 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 loses
count. I say to him, maybe, "Five-thirty, please"; and he wakes me with
a 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 himself
it is half-past five, if not a little later. To satisfy him, I put on a
pair of slippers and go downstairs to inspect the dining-room clock. What
happens to a man when he wanders about the house in the middle of the
night, clad in a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, there is no need
to recount; most men know by experience. Everything--especially
everything 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, it
comes at you and kicks you. I return to bed bad tempered, and refusing
to listen to his further absurd suggestion that all the clocks in the
house have entered into a conspiracy against me, take half an hour to get
to sleep again. From four to five he wakes me every ten minutes. I wish
I had never said a word to him about the thing. At five o'clock he goes
to sleep himself, worn out, and leaves it to the girl, who does it half
an hour later than usual.
On this particular Wednesday he worried me to such an extent, that I got
up at five simply to be rid of him. I did not know what to do with
myself. Our train did not leave till eight; all our luggage had been
packed and sent on the night before, together with the bicycles, to
Fenchurch Street Station. I went into my study; I thought I would put in
an hour's writing. The early morning, before one has breakfasted, is
not, I take it, a good season for literary effort. I wrote three
paragraphs of a story, and then read them over to myself. Some unkind
things have been said about my work; but nothing has yet been written
which would have done justice to those three paragraphs. I threw them
into 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 sheep
were browsing there, and they followed and took a keen interest in my
practice. The one was a kindly, sympathetic old party. I do not think
she understood the game; I think it was my doing this innocent thing so
early in the morning that appealed to her. At every stroke I made she
bleated:
"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, as
discouraging 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. As
a matter of fact, some were really excellent strokes; but she did it just
to be contradictory, and for the sake of irritating. I could see that.
By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the good
sheep on the nose. And at that the bad sheep laughed--laughed distinctly
and undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her friend stood glued
to the ground, too astonished to move, she changed her note for the first
time 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 of
the 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 when
Ethelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the breakfast was
on the table, I remembered that I had not shaved. It vexes Ethelbertha
my shaving quickly. She fears that to outsiders it may suggest a poor-
spirited attempt at suicide, and that in consequence it may get about the
neighbourhood that we are not happy together. As a further argument, she
has also hinted that my appearance is not of the kind that can be trifled
with.
On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long farewell
of Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down. But I should
have liked more opportunity to say a few farewell words of advice to the
children, especially as regards my fishing rod, which they will persist
in 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; they
were also running. In their case--so Harris informed me, jerkily, while
we 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 or
other it had blown up the kidneys and scalded the cook. He said he hoped
that 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, and
reflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in the
carriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my Uncle
Podger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would start from
Ealing 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. I
do not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb. Many stout City
gentlemen lived at Ealing in those days--I believe some live there
still--and caught early trains to Town. They all started late; they all
carried a black bag and a newspaper in one hand, and an umbrella in the
other; and for the last quarter of a mile to the station, wet or fine,
they all ran.
Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chiefly and errand boys, with
now and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather on the
common of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the most
deserving. It was not a showy spectacle. They did not run well, they
did 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 natural
admiration 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 'e
gets there!"
"Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!"--a nickname bestowed by a youth of
entomological tastes upon a certain retired military neighbour of my
uncle's,--a gentleman of imposing appearance when stationary, but apt to
colour highly under exercise.
My uncle and the others would write to the _Ealing Press_ complaining
bitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the editor
would add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among the Lower
Orders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs. But no good ever
resulted.
It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troubles
came to him at the last moment. The first thing he would do after
breakfast would be to lose his newspaper. We always knew when Uncle
Podger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignation
with which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general. It
never occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself:
"I am a careless old man. I lose everything: I never know where I have
put anything. I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself. In
this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me. I must
set to work and reform myself."
On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convinced
himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else's fault in
the 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 by
conjurers, 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 paper
in 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 five
minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while? Do
you think I'm a fool?"
Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere a
paper neatly folded.
"I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatching
at it savagely.
He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would
pause, 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 it
would be Saturday's.
We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting on
it. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness that
comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band of
hopeless idiots.
"All the time, right in front of your noses--!" He would not finish the
sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.
This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of my
Aunt 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, she
would say, what might happen.
One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this was
noticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation, would scatter
with a whoop to find it. Immediately they were gone it would turn up by
itself from somewhere quite near, always with the most reasonable
explanation for its absence; and would at once start off after the others
to explain to them that it was found. In this way, five minutes at least
would be taken up in everybody's looking for everybody else, which was
just sufficient time to allow my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his
hat. Then, at last, the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room
clock would commence to strike nine. It possessed a cold, penetrating
chime that always had the effect of confusing my uncle. In his
excitement 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 over
again. 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 that
child would always be the most affectionate.
If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out with
some tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes slow, and
of his having been late for school the previous day in consequence. This
would send my uncle rushing impetuously down to the gate, where he would
recollect that he had with him neither his bag nor his umbrella. All the
children that my aunt could not stop would charge after him, two of them
struggling for the umbrella, the others surging round the bag. And when
they returned we would discover on the hall table the most important
thing of all that he had forgotten, and wondered what he would say about
it when he came home.
We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded to put
George's experiment into operation. Opening the book at the chapter
entitled "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 or
imitation. Calling to a friend named "Charles" to "hold the steed," he
sprang from his box, and returned to us a bow, that would have done
credit to Mr. Turveydrop himself. Speaking apparently in the name of the
nation, he welcomed us to England, adding a regret that Her Majesty was
not at the moment in London.
We could not reply to him in kind. Nothing of this sort had been
anticipated by the book. We called him "coachman," at which he again
bowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have the goodness to
drive 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 fare
would be.
The question, as introducing a sordid element into the conversation,
seemed to hurt his feelings. He said he never took money from
distinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir--a diamond scarf pin, a
gold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort by which he could remember
us.
As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather too
far in the cabman's direction, we climbed in without further parley, and
were driven away amid cheers. We stopped the cab at a boot shop a little
past Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of place we wanted. It was
one of those overfed shops that the moment their shutters are taken down
in the morning disgorge their goods all round them. Boxes of boots stood
piled on the pavement or in the gutter opposite. Boots hung in festoons
about its doors and windows. Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine,
bearing bunches of black and brown boots. Inside, the shop was a bower
of boots. The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer
opening 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 a
disagreeable 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 worthy
gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend of
his."
What he did say was: "Don't know him; never heard of him."
This was disconcerting. The book gave three or four methods of buying
boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," as
being of all the most courtly. You talked a good deal with the
shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendship
and understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefully
into the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots,
"cheap and good." This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing
for the niceties of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one to
come to business with brutal directness. George abandoned "Mr. X," and
turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not a
happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to
any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled
as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positive
imbecility. It ran:--"One has told me that you have here boots for
sale."
For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked at
us. 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 they
proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast.
"What d'ye think I am," he continued, "a boot collector? What d'ye think
I'm running this shop for--my health? D'ye think I love the boots, and
can't bear to part with a pair? D'ye think I hang 'em about here to look
at 'em? Ain't there enough of 'em? Where d'ye think you are--in an
international exhibition of boots? What d'ye think these boots are--a
historical collection? Did you ever hear of a man keeping a boot shop
and not selling boots? D'ye think I decorate the shop with 'em to make
it look pretty? What d'ye take me for--a prize idiot?"
I have always maintained that these conversation books are never of any
real use. What we wanted was some English equivalent for the well-known
German 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 best
sentence that was to be found therein and applied it. He said:
"I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to show
me. Till then, adieu!"
With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man standing
in the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing remarks to us. What
he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by appeared to find it
interesting.
George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the experiment
afresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom slippers. But we
persuaded him to postpone their purchase until our arrival in some
foreign city, where the tradespeople are no doubt more inured to this
sort of talk, or else more naturally amiable. On the subject of the hat,
however, he was adamant. He maintained that without that he could not
travel, and, accordingly, we pulled up at a small shop in the Blackfriars
Road.
The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man, and he
helped us rather than hindered us.
When George asked him in the words of the book, "Have you any hats?" he
did not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully scratched his chin.
"Hats," said he. "Let me think. Yes"--here a smile of positive pleasure
broke over his genial countenance--"yes, now I come to think of it, I
believe I have a hat. But, tell me, why do you ask me?"
George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a travelling
cap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was to be a "good
cap."
The man's face fell.
"Ah," he remarked, "there, I am afraid, you have me. Now, if you had
wanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked for it; a cap good for
nothing 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," he
continued,--on seeing the disappointment that spread over George's
expressive countenance, "don't be in a hurry. I have a cap here"--he
went to a drawer and opened it--"it is not a good cap, but it is not so
bad 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 from
the book, said:
"This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider that
it 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 is
there, but you can easily miss it. Now, in that cap, to my mind, you do
miss it."
At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun with
this 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, is
twice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six. Would you like it wrapped
up in brown paper, sir, or in white?"
George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-six
in silver, and went out. Harris and I followed.
At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five shillings. He
made us another courtly bow, and begged us to remember him to the Emperor
of Austria.
Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game by two
points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw the book
out of window.
We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with the tide
at twelve dropped down the river.