expect her home by Christmas," said papa.
"I'll bet she is here to eat Thanksgiving dinner," cried my brother-in-law.
"No, she is sure to stay as long as she has said she would," said mamma.
Mothers are the brace of the universe. The family trailed down to the front door. Everybody was carrying something. There were two carriages, for they were all going to the station with us.
"For all the world like a funeral, with loads of flowers and everybody crying," said my brother, cheerfully.
I never shall forget that drive to the station; nor the last few moments, when Bee and I stood on the car-steps and talked to those who were on the platform of the station. Can anybody else remember how she felt at going to Europe for the first time and leaving everybody she loved at home? Bee grieved because there were no flowers at the train after all. But the next morning they appeared, a tremendous box, arranged as a surprise.
Telegrams came popping in at all the big stations along the way, enlivening our gloom, and at the steamer there were such loads of things that we might almost have set up as a florist, or fruiterer, or bookseller. Such a lapful of steamer letters and telegrams! I read a few each morning, and some of them I read every morning!
I don't like ocean travel. They sent grapefruit and confections to my state-room, which I tossed out of the port-hole. You know there are some people who think you don't know what you want. I travelled horizontally most of the way, and now people roar when I say I wasn't ill. Well, I wasn't, you know. We—well, Teddy would not like me to be more explicit. I own to a horrible headache which never left me. I deny everything else. Let them laugh. I was there, and I know.
The steamer I went on allows men to smoke on all the decks, and they all smoked in my face. It did not help me. I must say that I was unspeakably thankful to get my foot on dry ground once more. When we got to the dock a special train of toy cars took us through the greenest of green landscapes, and suddenly, almost before we knew it, we were at Waterloo Station, and knew that London was at our door.
II
LONDON
People said to me, "What are you going to London for?" I said, "To get an English point of view." "Very well," said one of the knowing ones, who has lived abroad the larger part of his life, "then you must go to 'The Insular,' in Piccadilly. That is not only the smartest hotel in London, but it is the most typically British. The rooms are let from season to season to the best country families. There you will find yourself plunged headlong into English life with not an American environment to bless yourself with, and you will soon get your English point of view."
"Ah-h," responded the simpleton who goes by my name, "that is what we want. We will go to 'The Insular.'"
We wrote at once for rooms, and then telegraphed for them from Southampton.
The steamer did not land her passengers until the morning of the ninth day, which shows the vast superiority of going on a fast boat, which gets you in fully as much as fifteen or twenty minutes ahead of the slow ones.
Our luggage would not go on even a four-wheeler, so we took a dear little private bus and proceeded to put our mountainous American trunks on it. We filled the top of this bus as full as it would hold, and put everything else inside. After stowing ourselves in there would not have been room even for another umbrella.
In this fashion we reached "The Insular," where we were received by four or five gorgeous creatures in livery, the head one of whom said, "Miss Columbia?" I admitted it, and we were ushered in, where we were met by more belonging to this tribe of gorgeousness, another of whom said, "Miss Columbia?"
"Yes," I said, firmly, privately wondering if they were trying to trip me into admitting that I was somebody else.
"The housekeeper will be here presently," said this person. "She is expecting you."
Forth came the housekeeper.
"Miss Columbia?" she said.
Once again I said "Yes," patiently, standing on my other foot.
"If you will be good enough to come with me I will show you your rooms."
A door opened outward, disclosing a little square place with two cane-bottomed chairs. A man bounced out so suddenly that I nearly annihilated my sister, who was back of me. I could not imagine what this little cubbyhole was, but as there seemed to be nowhere else to go, I went in. The others followed, then the man who had bounced out. He closed the door and shut us in, where we stood in solemn silence. About a quarter of an hour afterwards I thought I saw something through the glass moving slowly downward, and then an infinitesimal thrill in the soles of my feet led me to suspect the truth.
"Is this thing an elevator?" I whispered to my sister.
"No, they call it a lift over here," she whispered back.
"I know that," I murmured, impatiently. "But is this thing it? Are we moving? Are we going anywhere?"
"Why, of course, my dear. They are slower than ours, that's all."
I listened to her with some misgivings, for her information is not always to be wholly trusted, but this time it happened that she was right, for after a while we came to the fourth floor, where our rooms were.
I wish you could have seen the size of them. I shall not attempt to describe them, for you would not believe me. I had engaged "two rooms and a bath." The two rooms were there. "Where is the bath?" I said. The housekeeper lovingly, removed a gigantic crash towel from a hideous tin object, and proudly exposed to my vision that object which is next dearest to his silk hat to an Englishman's heart—a hip-bath tub. Her manner said, "Beat that if you can."
My sister prodded me in the back with her umbrella, which in our sign language means, "Don't make a scene."
"Very well," I said, rather meekly. "Have our trunks sent up."
"Very good, madam."
She went away, and then we rang the bell and began to order what were to us the barest necessities of life. We were tired and lame and sleepy from a night spent at the pier landing the luggage, and we wanted things with which to make ourselves comfortable.
There was a pocket edition of a fireplace, and they brought us a hatful of the vilest soft coal, which peppered everything in the rooms with soot.
We climbed over our trunks to sit by this imitation of a fire, only to find that there was nothing to sit on but the most uncompromising of straight-backed chairs.
We groaned as we took in the situation. To our poor, racked frames a coal-hod would not have suggested more discomfort. We dragged up our hampers, packed with steamer-rugs and pillows, and my sister sat on hers while I took another turn at the bell. While the maid is answering this bell I shall have plenty of time to tell you what we afterwards discovered the process of bell-ringing in an English hotel to
