After two days of delight in this quaint old town we took the train Londonward. Without consultation Jonas bought tickets for himself and wife, while I bought Euphemia's and mine. Consequently our servants travelled first-class, while we went in a second-class carriage. We were all greatly charmed with the beautiful garden country through which we passed. It was harvest time, and Jonas was much impressed by the large crops gathered from the little fields.
"I might try to do something of that kind when I go back," he afterward said, "but I expect I'd have to dig a little hole for each grain of wheat, and hoe it, and water it, and tie the blade to a stick if it was weakly."
"An' a nice easy time you'd have of it," said Pomona; "for you might plant your wheat field round a stump, and set there, and farm all summer, without once gettin' up."
"And that is Windsor!" exclaimed Euphemia, as we passed within view of that royal castle. "And there lives the Sovereign of our Mother Country!"
I was trying to puzzle out in what relationship to the Sovereign this placed us, when Euphemia continued:—
"I am bound to go to Windsor Castle! I have examined into every style of housekeeping, French flats and everything, and I must see how the Queen lives. I expect to get ever so many ideas."
"All right," said I; "and we will visit the royal stables, too, for I intend to get a new buggy when we get back."
We determined that on reaching London we would go directly to lodgings, not only because this was a more economical way of living, but because it was the way in which many of Euphemia's favorite heroes and heroines had lived in London.
"I want to keep house," she said, "in the same way that Charles and
Mary Lamb did. We will toast a bit of muffin or a potted sprat, and
we'll have a hamper of cheese and a tankard of ale, just like those old
English poets and writers."
"I think you are wrong about the hamper of cheese," I said. "It couldn't have been as much as that, but I have no doubt we'll have a jolly time."