“Think o’ me letting that scare me!” said Ike, giving his whip a vicious whisk through the air.
“But it seemed so strange,” I said.
“Ay, it did. Look yonder,” he said. “That’s the norrard. It looks light, don’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Ah! it never gets no darker than that all night. You’ll see that get more round to the nor-east as we gets nigher to London.”
So it proved, for by degrees I saw the stars in the north-east pale; and by the time we reached Hyde Park Corner a man was busy with a light ladder putting out the lamps, and it seemed all so strange that it should be broad daylight, while, as we jolted over the paving-stones as we went farther, the light had got well round now to the east, and the daylight affected Ike, for as, after a long silence, we suddenly heard once more from the top of the baskets:
“I’ve been to Paris and I’ve been to Dover!”
Ike took up the old song, and in a rough, but not unmusical voice roared out the second line:
“I’ve been a-travelling all the world over.”
Or, as he gave it to match Do-ho-ver—“O-ho-ver.” And it seemed to me that I had become a great traveller, for that was London all before me, with a long golden line above it in the sky.