“Ah, my!” Kit said to himself, rubbing his eyes after finishing the long letter, “this not knowing whether you have a father or not is bad business. But just suppose we should see him sitting again in his old chair in Huntington! I mustn’t think of that, though, for it may be only preparing for a disappointment.”
Captain Griffith approved of the letter to the consul when he read it; and when Kit asked permission for Harry Leonard to go up to London with him next day, it was given immediately.
“I don’t like to have my boys going into these big towns alone, getting into mischief,” he said; “but if Harry goes with you, that is a different matter. You know you are not a boy any more, but a supercargo; and you must keep Harry straight. By the way, Silburn, stand out there in the light a minute till I look at you. There; that is just the way I stood you out the night I rescued you from the policeman in Brooklyn. Do you know it occurred to me while you were describing your father this afternoon that you were giving almost an exact description of yourself? You must be very much like him.”
“I am glad to hear it, sir,” Kit laughed, “for he was always called a fine-looking man.”
When the Captain’s two “boys” took the ferryboat over to Tilbury in the morning, Harry was like a young colt in a spring pasture. No wonder, either, for he had not set foot off the North Cape’s deck before since she left New York. He was full of fun now that he was away from the restraint of the ship, and, like Kit, he was not disposed to admire everything simply because it was in a foreign country; on the contrary, most things he saw he regarded as fair game for ridicule.
“And they call these things cars, do they?” he asked, when they were seated alone in one of the compartments of the train. “Well, they look to me very much like our coal cars in America, with roofs put on them. I suppose they have such little windows because larger ones would be of no use; you never can see more than fifty yards in this country, on account of the fog. Did you ever see such a foggy hole? I know now why the sun never sets on the Queen’s dominions: it’s because it never rises, ‘don-cher-know?’ What do they want with an old Queen here, anyhow? I guess if a President’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for them.”
“I always thought you were an Irishman, Harry,” Kit laughed; “now I’m sure of it, from the way you find fault with the English. Wait till you see London; you may change your mind then.”
“Oh, London!” Harry sneered. “You’d think the sun rose out of the Thames and set in Buckingham Palace, to hear these Britishers talk. I’ll bet it’s not as fine a city as Bridgeport. Look at the big factories they have there, and the new court-house, and the—”
“We may as well get out here,” Kit interrupted, “as this is Fenchurch Street station and the end of the line. I don’t believe they’ll carry us any further.” He found it very entertaining and novel to act as a guide to London, particularly with a companion who looked upon everything from such original standpoints as Harry, and who was so determined to see nothing equal to America in the British capital.
Harry was so much interested in Kit’s accounts of the mummies and other curiosities in the British Museum, that they took a hansom and drove to the Museum first.