hit? I expect every one of those 'English Poets' went from top to bottom then, right through all your clothes. Never mind, I suppose it's all part of travelin'."

Mr. Heathcroft, looking more English than ever in his natty top coat, and hat at the back of his head, sauntered up. He was, for him, almost enthusiastic.

"Looking at the water, were you?" he queried. "Glorious color, isn't it. One never sees a sea like that or a sky like that anywhere but here at home."

Hephzy looked at the sea and sky. It was plain that she wished to admire, for his sake, but her admiration was qualified.

"Don't you think if they were a little brighter and bluer they'd be prettier?" she asked.

Heathcroft stared at her through his monocle.

"Bluer?" he repeated. "My dear woman, there are no skies as blue as the English skies. They are quite celebrated--really."

He sauntered on again, evidently disgusted at our lack of appreciation.

"He must be color-blind," I observed. Hephzy was more charitable.

"I guess likely everybody's home things are best," she said. "I suppose this green-streaked water and those gray clouds do look bright and blue to him. We must make allowances, Hosy. He never saw an August mornin' at Bayport, with a northwest wind blowin' and the bay white and blue to the edge of all creation. That's been denied him. He means well, poor thing; he don't know any better."

An hour later we landed from the passenger tender at a stone pier covered with substantial stone buildings. Uniformed custom officers and uniformed policemen stood in line as we came up the gang-plank. Behind them, funny little locomotives attached to queer cars which appeared to be all doors, puffed and panted.

Hephzibah looked about her.

"Yes," she said, with conviction. "I'm believin' it more and more all the time. It is England, just like the pictures. How many times I've seen engines like that in pictures, and cars like that, too. I never thought I'd ride in 'em. My goodness me? Hephzibah Jane Cahoon, you're in England--YOU are! You needn't be afraid to turn over for fear of wakin' up, either. You're awake and alive and in England! Hosy," with a sudden burst of exuberance, "hold on to me tight. I'm just as likely to wave my hat and hurrah as I am to do anything. Hold on to me--tight."

We got through the perfunctory customs examination without trouble. Our tickets provided by Campbell, included those for the railway journey to London. I secured a first-class compartment at the booking-office and a guard conducted us to it and closed the door. Another short delay and then, with a whistle as queer and unfamiliar as its own appearance, the little locomotive began to pull our train out of the station.

Hephzy leaned back against the cushions with a sigh of supreme content.

"And now," said I, "for London. London! think of it, Hephzy!"

Hephzy shook her head.

"I'm thinkin' of it," she said. "London--the biggest city in the world! Who knows, Hosy? France is such a little ways off; probably Little Frank has been to London a hundred times. He may even be there now. Who knows? I shouldn't be surprised if we met him right in London. I sha'n't be surprised at anything anymore. I'm in England and on my way to London; that's surprise enough. NOTHIN' could be more wonderful than that."

CHAPTER VI

In Which We Are Received at Bancroft's Hotel and I Receive a Letter

It was late when we reached London, nearly eleven o'clock. The long train journey was a delight. During the few hours of daylight and dusk we peered through the car windows at the scenery flying past; at the villages, the green fields, the hedges, the neat, trim farms.

"Everything looks as if it has been swept and dusted," declared Hephzy. "There aren't any waste places at all. What do they do with their spare land?"

"They haven't any," I answered. "Land is too valuable to waste. There's another thatched roof. It looks like those in the pictures, doesn't it."

Hephzy nodded. "Just exactly," she said. "Everything looks like the pictures. I feel as if I'd seen it all before. If that engine didn't toot so much like a tin whistle I should almost think it was a picture. But it isn't--it isn't; it's real, and you and I are part of it."

We dined on the train. Night came and our window-pictures changed to glimpses of flashing lights interspersed with shadowy blotches of darkness. At length the lights became more and more frequent and began to string out in long lines marking suburban streets. Then the little locomotive tooted its tin whistle frantically and we rolled slowly under a great train shed--Paddington Station and London itself.

Amid the crowd on the platform Hephzy and I stood, two lone wanderers not exactly sure what we should do next. About us the busy crowd jostled and pushed. Relatives met relatives and fathers and mothers met sons and daughters returning home after long separations. No one met us, no one was interested in us at all, except the porters and the cabmen. I selected a red-faced chunky porter who was a decidedly able person, apparently capable of managing anything except the letter h. The acrobatics which he performed with that defenceless consonant were marvelous. I have said that I selected him; that he selected me would be nearer the truth.

"Cab, sir. Yes, sir, thank you, sir," he said. "Leave that to me, sir. Will you 'ave a fourwheeler or a hordinary cab, sir?"

I wasn't exactly certain what a fourwheeler might be. I had read about them often enough, but I had never seen one pictured and properly labeled. For the matter of that, all the vehicles in sight appeared to have four wheels. So I said, at a venture, that I thought an ordinary cab would do.

"Yes, sir; 'ere you are, sir. Your boxes are in the luggage van, I suppose, sir."

I took it for granted he meant my trunks and those were in what I, in my ignorance, would have called a baggage car:

"Yes, sir," said the porter. "If the lidy will be good enough to wait 'ere, sir, you and I will go hafter the boxes, sir."

Cautioning Hephzy not to stir from her moorings on any account I followed my guide to the "luggage van." This crowded car disgorged our two steamer trunks and, my particular porter having corraled a fellow-craftsman to help him, the trunks were dragged to the waiting cab.

I found Hephzy waiting, outwardly calm, but inwardly excited.

"I saw one at last," she declared. "I'd about come to believe there wasn't such a thing, but there is; I just saw one."

"One--what?" I asked, puzzled.

"An Englishman with side-whiskers. They wasn't as big and long as those in the pictures, but they were side-whiskers. I feel better. When you've been brought up to believe every Englishman wore 'em, it was kind of humiliatin' not to see one single set."

I paid my porters--I learned afterward that, like most Americans, I had given them altogether too much--and we climbed into the cab with our bags. The "boxes," or trunks, were on the driver's seat and on the roof.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

I hesitated. Even at this late date I had not made up my mind exactly "where to." My decision was a hasty one.

"Why--er--to--to Bancroft's Hotel," I said. "Blithe Street, just off Piccadilly."

I think the driver was somewhat astonished. Very few of his American passengers selected Bancroft's as a stopping place, I imagine. However, his answer was prompt.

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir," he said. The cab rolled out of the station.

"I suppose," said Hephzy, reflectively, "if you had told him or that porter man that they were everlastin' idiots they'd have thanked you just the same and called you 'sir' four times besides."

"No doubt they would."

"Yes, sir, I'm perfectly sure they would--thank you, sir. So this is London. It doesn't look such an awful lot different from Boston or New York so far."

But Bancroft's, when we reached it, was as unlike a Boston or New York hotel as anything could be. A short, quiet, eminently respectable street, leading from Piccadilly; a street fenced in, on both sides, by three-story, solid, eminently respectable houses of brick and stone. No signs, no street cars, no crowds, no glaring lights. Merely a gas lamp burning over the fanlight of a spotless white door, and the words "Bancroft's Hotel" in mosaic lettering set in a white stone slab in the pavement.

The cab pulled up before the white door and Hephzy and I looked out of the window. The same thought was in both our minds.