"You get on my carriage, and I drive you to where you want," he replied reassuringly, making of our luggage a resting-place for his honest boots, and climbing into his seat.
Magnetized by his manner, we obeyed, and it was not until we had started, rattling over the stone-paved street, that Phil bethought herself of an important detail.
"Wait a moment. Ask him if it's a nice hotel where he's taking us."
I stood up, seized the railing of the driver's seat to steady myself, and shrieked the question above the noise of the wheels.
"I take you right place," he returned; and I repeated the sentence to Phyllis.
"That's no answer. Ask him if it's respectable; we can't go if it isn't. Ask him if it's expensive; we can't go if it is."
I yelled the message.
"I take you hotel by-and-by. You see Rotterdam a little first."
"But we don't want to see Rotterdam first. We want breakfast. Rotterdam by-and-by."
A sudden bump flung me down onto the hard seat. I half rose to do battle again; then, as I gazed up at that implacable Dutch back, I began dimly to understand how Holland, though a dot of a nation, tired out and defeated fiery Spain. I knew that no good would be accomplished by resisting that back. Short of hurling ourselves out on the stones, we would have to see Rotterdam, so we might as well make the best of it. And this I urged upon Phil, with reproaches for her niggardliness in not buying Baedeker, who would have put stars to tell us the names of hotels, and given us crisp maps to show where they were situated in connection with other things.