CHAPTER IV



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 imbecilitiy. 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.