"Very well, aunt--that's all right. You'll find him, or he'll find you; don't you trouble."
But she did trouble. She kept on troubling. And her cause for troubling grew more and more as the day went on. Before we were in the main building--it's a journey from the low level station through endless passages, and up countless stairs, placed at the most inconvenient intervals--Mrs. Penna was hors de combat. As no seat was handy she insisted on sitting down upon the floor. Passers-by made the most disagreeable comments, but she either could not or would not move. My aunt seemed half beside herself. She said to me most unfairly,
"You ought not to have brought us here on a day like this. It is evident that there are some most dissipated creatures here. I have a horror of a crowd--and with all the members of our party on my hands--and such a crowd!"
"How was I to know? I had not the faintest notion that anything particular was on till we were in the train."
"But you ought to have known. You live in London."
"It is true that I live in London. But I do not, on that account, keep an eye on what is going on at the Palace. I have something else to occupy my time. Besides, there is an easy remedy--let us leave the place at once. We might find fewer people in the Tower of London--I was never there, so I can't say--or on the top of the Monument."
"Without Matthew Holman?"
"Personally, I should say 'Yes.' He, at any rate, is in congenial company."
"Thomas!"
I wish I could reproduce the tone in which my aunt uttered my name! it would cause the edges of the sheet of paper on which I am writing to curl.