you, sir? You couldn't spare one of them for another gentleman? meaning me."
"You might have Jane," replied the affable Mr. Dyer.
"And which might happen to be Jane?"
Mr. Dyer supplied the information. The red-faced gentleman raised his hat. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, miss; hope we shall be better friends before the day is over."
My aunt, in the compartment behind, rose in her wrath.
"Daniel Dyer! Jane! How dare you behave in such a manner!"
The red-faced gentleman twisted himself round in his seat.
"Beg pardon, miss--was you speaking to me? If you're alone, I dare say there's another gentleman present who'll be willing to oblige. Every young lady ought to have a gent to herself on a day like this. Do me the favour of putting this to your lips; you'll find it's the right stuff."
Taking out a flat bottle, wiping it upon the sleeve of his coat, he offered it to my aunt. She succumbed.
When I found myself a struggling unit in the struggling mass on the Crystal Palace platform, my aunt caught me by the arm.
"Thomas, where have you brought us to?"
"This is the Crystal Palace, aunt."
"The Crystal Palace! It's pandemonium! Where are the members of our party?"
That was the question. My aunt collared such of them as she could lay her hands on. Matthew Holman was missing. Personally, I was not sorry. He had been "putting his lips" to more than one friendly bottle in the compartment behind mine, and was on a fair way to having a "nice day" on lines of his own. I was quite willing that he should have it by himself. But my aunt was not. She was for going at once for the police and commissioning them to hunt for and produce him then and there.
"I'm responsible for the man," she kept repeating. "I have his ticket."
"Very well, aunt--that's all right. You'll find him, or he'll find you; don't you trouble."
But she did trouble. She kept on troubling. And her cause for troubling grew more and more as the day went on. Before we were in the main building--it's a journey from the low level station through endless passages, and up countless stairs, placed at the most inconvenient intervals--Mrs. Penna was hors de combat. As no seat was handy she insisted on sitting down upon the floor. Passers-by made the most disagreeable comments, but she either could not or would not move. My aunt seemed half beside herself. She said to me most unfairly,
"You ought not to have brought us here on a day like this. It is evident that there are some most dissipated creatures here. I have a horror of a crowd--and with all the members of our party on my hands--and such a crowd!"
"How was I to know? I had not the faintest notion that anything particular was on till we were in the train."
"But you ought to have known. You live in London."
"It is true that I live in London. But I do not, on that account, keep an eye on what is going on at the Palace. I have something else to occupy my time. Besides, there is an easy remedy--let us leave the place at once. We might find fewer people in the Tower of London--I was never there, so I can't say--or on the top of the Monument."
"Without Matthew Holman?"
"Personally, I should say 'Yes.' He, at any rate, is in congenial company."
"Thomas!"
I wish I could reproduce the tone in which my aunt uttered my name! it would cause the edges of the sheet of paper on which I am writing to curl.
Another source of annoyance was the manner in which the red-faced gentleman persisted in sticking to us, like a limpet--as if he were a member of the party. Jane and Ellen kept themselves glued together. On Ellen's right was Daniel Dyer, and on Jane's left was the red-faced gentleman. This was a condition of affairs of which my aunt strongly disapproved. She remonstrated with the stranger, but without the least effect. I tried my hand on him, and failed. He was the best-tempered and thickest-skinned individual I ever remember to have met.
"It's this way," I explained--he needed a deal of explanation. "This lady has brought these people for a little pleasure excursion to town, for the day only; and, as these young ladies are in her sole charge, she feels herself responsible for them. So would you just mind leaving us?"
It seemed that he did mind; though he showed no signs of having his feelings hurt by the suggestion, as some persons might have done.
"Don't you worry, governor; I'll help her look after 'em. I've looked after a few people in my time, so the young lady can trust me--can't you, miss?"
Jane giggled. My impression is that my aunt felt like shaking her. But just then I made a discovery.
"Hallo! Where's the youngster?"
My aunt twirled herself round.
"Stephen! Goodness! where has that boy gone to?"
Jane looked through the glass which ran all along one side of the corridor.
"Why, miss, there's Stephen Treen over in that crowd there."
"Go and fetch him back this instant."
I believe that my aunt spoke without thinking. It did seem to me that Jane showed an almost criminal eagerness to obey her. Off she flew into the grounds, through the great door which was wide open close at hand, with Ellen still glued to her arm, and Daniel Dyer at her heels, and the red-faced gentleman after him. Almost in a moment they became melted, as it were, into the crowd and were lost to view. My aunt peered after them through her glasses.
"I can't see Stephen Treen--can you?"
"No, aunt, I can't. I doubt if Jane could, either."
"Thomas! What do you mean? She said she did."
"Ah! there are people who'll say anything. I think you'll find that, for a time, at any rate, you've got three more members of the party off your hands."
"Thomas! How can you talk like that? After bringing us to this dreadful place! Go after those benighted girls at once, and bring them back, and that wretched Daniel Dyer, and that miserable child, and Matthew Holman, too."
It struck me, from her manner, that my aunt was hovering on the verge of hysterics. When I was endeavouring to explain how it was that I did not see my way to start off, then and there, in a sort of general hunt, an official, sauntering up, took a bird's-eye view of Mrs. Penna.
"Hallo, old lady what's the matter with you? Aren't you well?"
"No, I be not well--I be dying. Take me home and let me die upon my bed."
"So bad as that, is it? What's the trouble?"
"I've been up all night and all day, and little to eat and naught to drink, and I be lame."
"Lame, are you?" The official turned to my aunt. "You know you didn't ought to bring a lame old lady into a crowd like this."
"I
