I went from house to house in the moonlight—it was after midnight—rousing drowsy Englishmen who courteously gave me directions and facing yowling dogs who stood in the open roadway and barked. I had to push one barking guardian out of the way with my hands. All was silent as a church yard. Finally I came to a family of Americans who were newly locating for the winter not far from Bridgely Level and they put me right. I recall the comment of the woman who opened the door: “You’re an American, aren’t you?” and the interest she took in being sure that I would find my way. When I finally reached my door I paused in the garden to survey the fog-lined valley from which came the distant bark of a dog.
CHAPTER XIII
LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS
I stood one evening in Piccadilly, at the dinner hour, staring into the bright shop windows. London’s display of haberdashery and gold and silver ornaments interests me intensely. It was drizzling and I had no umbrella; yet that situation soon ceases to annoy one in England. I walked on into Regent Street and stopped under an arc light to watch the home-surging crowds—the clerks, men and women, the boys and girls.
The thought was with me as I walked in the rain, “Where shall I dine? How shall I do it?” I wandered through New Bond Street; and looking idly at the dark stores, as I came back along Piccadilly, I saw two girls, arm in arm, pass by. One of them looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. She was of medium size and simply dressed. She was pretty in the fresh English way, with large, too innocent eyes. The girls paused before a shop window and as I stopped beside them and looked at the girl who had smiled, she edged over toward me and I spoke to her.
“Wouldn’t you like to take the two of us?” she asked with that quaint odd accent of the Welsh. Her voice was soft and her eyes were as blue and weak in their force as any unsophisticated girl’s might well be.
“This girl isn’t hard and vulgar,” I said to myself. I suppose we all pride ourselves on knowing something of character in women. I thought I did.
“No,” I replied rather directly to her question. “Not to-night. But let’s you and I go somewhere for dinner.”
“Would you mind givin’ my friend a shillin’?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I replied. “There you are.”