"When you are only going to pay five shillings for a dog," my wife had pointed out, with convincing logic, "it is silly to go and pay perhaps another five shillings for a cab. It doubles the price of the dog at once. If we had been buying an expensive dog we might have taken a cab; but not for a five-shilling one."
"Now," I inquired briskly, "how are we going to find this place?"
"Haven't you any idea where it is?"
"No. I have a sort of vague notion that it is on an island in the middle of the river, called the Isle of Dogs, or Barking Reach, or something like that. However, I have no doubt—"
"Hadn't we better ask some one?" suggested Stella.
I demurred.
"If there is one thing I dislike," I said, "it is accosting total strangers and badgering them for information they don't possess—not that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time!"
"Yes, dear," said Stella soothingly.
"Now I suggest—" My hand went to my pocket.
"No, darling," interposed my wife, hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to maps and railroad time-tables. They would rather consult a half-witted errand boy or a deaf railroad porter. "Do not let us make a spectacle of ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully."