“We are,” said Mr. Payton. “I’ve been wanting to see it, along with other things, all my life, Phil. You see, I wasn’t so lucky as you. However, I expect to make up for lost time.”
“Well, it’s a treat just to ride along the streets,” said Evelyn. “It’s so very different from anything I ever saw before.”
“Yes; you could imagine you were reading Dickens,” said Lucile, her eyes bright with the idea. “Why, that little shop might almost be the same one where——”
“Uncle Sol and Cap’n Cuttle hung out,” said Phil.
“Yes,” Jessie added, excitedly. “And you can almost see little Florence Dombey——”
“And her black-eyed maid, Susan,” said Evelyn, eagerly, and they all laughed delightedly at the picture.
“Gee, it does seem to make his books lots more real,” Phil chuckled. “Dear old Cap’n Cuttle and Uncle Sol’s nevvy, Wal’r—you remember him, don’t you?”
Of course they did. So on they went, most of the time in gales of merriment, as some house or modest little shop suggested some character or happening in the books of the great writer and humorist.
So happy were they in their imagining that they were almost sorry to find themselves at their destination.
“Oh, so soon?” cried Lucile, trying vainly to straighten the corners of her laughing mouth into some semblance 122 of the sobriety that befitted so great an occasion. “Oh, I never get enough of anything!” This last a protest against fate.