“I saw one at last,” she declared. “I'd about come to believe there wasn't such a thing, but there is; I just saw one.”
“One—what?” I asked, puzzled.
“An Englishman with side-whiskers. They wasn't as big and long as those in the pictures, but they were side-whiskers. I feel better. When you've been brought up to believe every Englishman wore 'em, it was kind of humiliatin' not to see one single set.”
I paid my porters—I learned afterward that, like most Americans, I had given them altogether too much—and we climbed into the cab with our bags. The “boxes,” or trunks, were on the driver's seat and on the roof.
“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.
I hesitated. Even at this late date I had not made up my mind exactly “where to.” My decision was a hasty one.
“Why—er—to—to Bancroft's Hotel,” I said. “Blithe Street, just off Piccadilly.”
I think the driver was somewhat astonished. Very few of his American passengers selected Bancroft's as a stopping place, I imagine. However, his answer was prompt.
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” he said. The cab rolled out of the station.
“I suppose,” said Hephzy, reflectively, “if you had told him or that porter man that they were everlastin' idiots they'd have thanked you just the same and called you 'sir' four times besides.”