She closed her eyes. I saw now she was very tired. I thought she had gone to sleep and I looked in front of me puzzling out the problem. Presently the cab-doors were thrust violently open, and if I had net held her back, she would have jumped out of the vehicle.
“Look!” she cried, in great excitement. “There! There’s Harry’s name!”
She pointed to a butcher’s cart immediately in front of us, bearing, in large letters, the name of “E. Robinson.”
“We must stop,” she went on. “He will tell us about Harry.”
It took me from Oxford Circus to Portman Square to convince her that there were many thousands of Robinsons in London and that the probability of the butcher’s cart being a clue to Harry’s whereabouts was exceedingly remote.
At Baker Street station she asked, wearily: “Is it still far to your house?”
“No,” said I, encouragingly. “Not very far.”
“But one can drive for many days through streets in London, and there will be still streets, still houses? So they tell me in Alexandretta. London is as big as the moon, not so?”
I felt absurdly pleased. She was capable of an idea. I had begun to wonder whether she were not merely half-witted. The fact of her being able to read had already cheered me.
“Many hours, yes,” I corrected, “not many days. London seems big to you?”