YOU are sure you know where you're going?' said Lady Torquilin, referring to the 'Army and Navy.' 'Victoria omnibus, remember, at Sloane-square; a penny fare, and not more, mind. You must learn to look after your pennies. Now, what are you to do for me at the Stores?'

'A packet of light Silurian; your camphor and aconite pilules; to ask how long they intend to be over the valise, they're fixing for you——'

'Portmanteau they're re-covering. Yes, go on!'

'And what their charge is for cleaning red curtains.'

'And to complain about the candles,' added Lady Torquilin.'

'And to complain about the candles.'

'Yes. Don't forget about the candles, dear. See what they'll do. And I'm very sorry I can't go with you to Madame Tussaud's, but you know I've been trotting about the whole morning, and all those wax people, with their idiotic expressions, this afternoon would simply finish me off! I'll just lie down a bit, and go with you another day; I couldn't stand up much longer to talk to the Queen herself! You pop into the "Underground," you know, at St. James's Park, and out at Baker Street. Now, where do you pop in?—and out? That's quite right. Good-bye, child. I rang for the lift to come up a quarter of an hour ago; it's probably there now, and we mustn't keep it waiting. Off you go!' But the elevator-door was locked, and our descent had begun, when Lady Torquilin hurried along the passage, arrested, and kept it waiting on her own account. 'It's only to say, dear,' she called through the grating, 'that you are on no consideration whatever to get in or out of an Underground train while it is moving. On no consideration what-;' but the grating slowly disappeared, and the rest of Lady Torquilin's admonition came down on the top of the elevator.

I had done every one of the commissions. I had been magisterially raised and lowered from one floor to another, to find that everything I wanted was situated up and down so many staircases 'and turn to your right, madam,' that I concluded they kept an elevator at the Stores for pleasure. I had had an agreeable interview with a very blonde young druggist upon the pilules in the regions above, and had made it all right with a man in mutton-chop whiskers and an apron about the candles in the regions below. I had seen a thing I had never seen in my life before, a very curious thing, that interested me enormously—a husband and father buying his wife's and daughters' dry-goods—probably Lady Torquilin would tell me to say 'dress materials.' In America our husbands and fathers are too much occupied to make purchases for their families, for which it struck me that we had never been thankful enough 'I will not have you in stripes!' I heard him say, as I passed, full of commiseration for her. 'What arrogance!' I thought. 'In America they are glad to have us in anything.' And I rejoiced that it was so.

Original

But, as I was saying, I had done all Lady Torquilin's commissions, and was making my last trip to the ground-floor with the old soldier in the elevator, when a gentleman got in at one of the stopping-places, and sat down opposite me. He had that look of deliberate indifference that I have noticed so many English gentlemen carry about with them—as if, although they are bodily present, their interest in life had been carefully put away at home—and he concentrated his attention upon the point of his umbrella, just as he used to do upon the salt-cellars crossing the Atlantic Ocean. And he looked up almost with astonishment when I said, 'How do you do, Mr. Mafferton?' rather as if he did not quite expect to be spoken to in an elevator by a young lady. Miss Wick!' he said, and we shook hands as the old soldier let us out. 'How very odd! I was on the point of looking you up at Lady Torquilin's. You see, I've found you out at last—no thanks to you—after looking all over the place.'

There was a very definite reproach in this, so I told Mr. Mafferton as we went down the steps that I was extremely sorry he had taken any trouble on my account; that I had fully intended to write to him in the course of a day or two, but he had no idea how much time it took up getting settled in a flat where the elevator ran only at stated intervals. 'But,' I said, with some curiosity, 'how did you find me out, Mr. Mafferton?' For if there is one interesting thing, it is to discover how an unexpected piece of information about yourself has been come by.

'Lady Torquilin dropped me a line,' replied Mr. Mafferton; 'that is, she mentioned it in—in a note yesterday. Lady Torquilin,' Mr. Mafferton went on, 'is a very old friend of mine—and an awfully good sort, as I daresay you are beginning to find out.'

By this time we had reached the pavement, and were standing in everybody's way, with the painful indetermination that attacks people who are not quite sure whether they ought to separate or not. "'Ansom cab, sir?" asked one of the porters. 'No!' said Mr. Mafferton. 'I was on the very point,' he went on to me, dodging a boy with a bandbox, 'of going to offer my services as cicerone this afternoon, if you and Lady Torquilin would be good enough to accept them.'

''Ansom cab, sir?' asked another porter, as Mr. Mafferton, getting out of the way of a resplendent footman, upset a small child with a topheavy bonnet, belonging to the lady who belonged to the footman.

'No!' said Mr. Mafferton, in quite a temper. 'Shall we get out of this?' he asked me, appealingly; and we walked on in the direction of the Houses of Parliament. 'There's nothing on in particular, that I know of he continued; 'but there are always the stock shows, and Lady Torquilin is up to any amount of sight-seeing, I know.'

'She isn't today, Mr. Mafferton. She's lying down. I did my best to persuade her to come out with me, and she wouldn't. But I'm going sight-seeing this very minute, and if you would like to come too, I'm sure I shall be very glad.'

Mr. Mafferton looked a little uncomfortable. 'Where were you thinking of going?' he asked.

'To Madame Tussaud's,' I said. 'You go by the Underground Railway from here. Get in at St. James's Park Station, and out at Baker Street Station—about twenty-five minutes in the cars. And you are not,' I said, remembering what I had been told, 'under any consideration whatever, to get in or out of the train while it is moving.'

Mr. Mafferton laughed. 'Lady Torquilin has been coaching you,' he said: but he still looked uncomfortable, and thinking he felt, perhaps, like an intruder upon my plans, and wishing to put him at his ease, I said: 'It would really be very kind of you to come, Mr. Mafferton, for even at school I never could remember English history, and now I've probably got your dynasties worse mixed up than ever. It would be a great advantage to go with somebody who knows all the dates, and which kings usurped their thrones, and who they properly belonged to.'

Mr. Mafferton laughed again. 'I hope you don't expect all that of me,' he said. 'But if you are quite sure we couldn't rout Lady Torquilin out, I will take you to Madame Tussaud's with the greatest pleasure, Miss Wick.'

'I'm quite sure,' I told Mr. Mafferton, cheerfully. 'She said all those wax people, with their idiotic expressions, this afternoon would simply finish her up!'—and Mr. Mafferton said Lady Torquilin put things very quaintly, didn't she? And we went together into one of those great echoing caverns in the sides of the streets that led down flights of dirty steps, past the man who punches the tickets, and widen out into that border of desolation with a fierce star burning and brightening in the blackness of the farther end, which is a platform of the Underground Railway.

'This,' said I to Mr. Mafferton as we walked up and down waiting for our train, 'is one of the things I particularly wanted to see.'

'The penny weighing-machine?' asked Mr. Mafferton, for I had stopped to look at that.

'The whole thing,' said I—'the Underground system. But this is interesting in itself,' I added, putting a penny in, and stepping on the machine.

Original

'Please hold my parasol, Mr. Mafferton, so that I may get the exact truth for my penny.' Mr. Mafferton took the parasol with a slightly clouded expression, which deepened when one of two gentlemen who had just come on the platform bowed to him. 'I think, if you don't mind, Miss Wick, we had better go farther along the platform—it will be easier to get the carriage,' he said, in a manner which quite dashed my amiable intention of telling him how even the truth was cheaper in this country than in America, for our weighing-machines wouldn't work for less than a nickel, which was twice and a-half as much as a penny. Just then, however, the train came whizzing in, we bundled ourselves into a compartment, the door banged after us with frightful explosiveness—the Underground bang is a thing which I should think the omnibus companies had great cause to be thankful for—and we went with a scream and a rush into the black unknown. It seemed to me in the first few minutes that life as I had been accustomed to it had lapsed, and that a sort of semi-conscious existence was filling up the gap between what had been before and what would be again. I can't say I found this phase of being agreeable. It occurred to me that my eyes and my ears and my lungs might just as well have been left at home. The only organ that found any occupation was my nose—all sense seemed concentrated in that sharp-edged, objectionable smell. 'What do you think of the Underground?' said Mr. Mafferton, leaning across, above the rattle.

I told him I hadn't had time to analyse my impressions, in a series of shrieks, and subsided to watch for the greyness of the next station. After that had passed, and I was convinced that there were places where you could escape to the light and air of the outside world again, I asked Mr. Mafferton a number of questions about the railway, and in answering them he said the first irritating thing I heard in England. 'I hope,' he remarked, 'that your interest in the Underground won't take you all the way round the Circle to see what it's like.'

'Why do you hope that, Mr. Mafferton?' I said. 'Is it dangerous?'

'Not in the least.' he returned, a little confusedly. 'Only—most Americans like to "make the entire circuit," I believe.'

'I've no doubt they want to see how bad it can be,' I said. 'We are a very fair nation, Mr. Mafferton. But though I can't understand your hope in the matter, I don't think it likely I shall travel by Underground any more than I can help.' Because, for the moment, I felt an annoyance. Why should Mr. Mafferton 'hope' about my conduct?—Mr. Mafferton was not my maiden aunt! But he very politely asked me how I thought it compared with the Elevated in New York, and I was obliged to tell him that I really didn't think it compared at all. The Elevated was ugly to look at, and some people found it giddy to ride on, but it took you through the best quality of air and sunlight the entire distance; and if anything happened, at all events you could see what it was. Mr. Mafferton replied that he thought he preferred the darkness to looking through other people's windows; and this preference of Mr. Mafferton's struck me later as being interestingly English. And after that we both lapsed into meditation, and I thought about old London, with its Abbey, and its Tower, and its Houses of Parliament, and its Bluecoat boys, and its monuments, and its ten thousand hansom cabs, lying just over my head; and an odd, pleasurable sensation of undermining the centuries and playing a trick with history almost superseded the Underground smell. The more I thought about it, and about what Mr. Mafferton had said, the more I liked that feeling of taking an enormous liberty with London, and by the time we reached Baker Street Station I was able to say to Mr. Mafferton, with a clear conscience, in spite of my smuts and half-torpid state of mind, that on consideration I thought I would like to compass London by the Underground—to 'make the entire circuit.'

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