After all, the weather isn't the only changeable thing in this world,
and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from
Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start
for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London
two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise
for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we
started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where
we had been before.
Of course we couldn't do anything until Monday, and this morning when
we got up we didn't feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful
things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town
looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if
you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in
by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
Jone said we'd better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he
believed in getting the best there was when it didn't cost too much,
but I wouldn't do it.
[Illustration: "Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!"]
"No," said I. "When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed
precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of
cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those
great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up
with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would
be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise
within my breast."
As we didn't go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where
we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the
hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind
blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of
the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at
last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking
and reading a paper:
"Let's put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can't mope here
another minute."
So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance
who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that
hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like
a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after
doing his duty.
_Letter Number Sixteen_