Bertie had paid three previous visits to London,--this made the fourth. On each of the previous occasions he had been accompanied by his father; this was the first time he had come alone. Many a time that day he wished that he had postponed his personal exploration till a little later on; about the middle of the century after next, he was persuaded, would have been time enough for him. His first visit had been as one of a family party to see the pantomime. There had been a morning performance; they had left home early in the morning, returning late at night. That day was a red-letter day in Bertie's calendar. "When I went to see the pantomime," was the words which formed a prelude to many a tale of the wondrous sights which he had seen. The second time he came up with father alone. The doctor had had some meeting to attend at the hospital at which he had spent his student days, and Bertie bore him company. Afterwards a visit had been paid to Madame Tussaud's and the Zoological Gardens. But the climax of the day had been the dinner at the restaurant in the evening before returning home. Bertie always thought that he had seen life when he looked backwards at that dinner in the after days. Champagne had accompanied that repast, and a band had played. But the crowning visit had been the third. A certain cousin--feminine--had been a member of the party, and she alone would have canonized the day. They had gone to the exhibition and dined there, and seen the illuminations, and he had told himself that London was a city of delights, a paradise below, fairyland to-day. This point of view did not occur to him with so much force on this, the occasion of his fourth visit. As he struggled up and down the wet and greasy streets, with his blistered feet and his empty stomach, anything more unlike a city of delights it seemed to him that he had never seen. He was continually getting into everybody's way, always being hustled into the gutter, and once, when an irate elderly gentleman sent him flying backwards to assume a sitting posture in the centre of a heap of mud, everybody laughed. But it was no joke to him. The elderly gentleman was a little sorry when he saw what he had done. "You oughtn't to get in my way! The police didn't ought to allow boys like you to hang about the streets!" That was the way he expressed his penitence, and then passed on. Bertie picked himself up at leisure. He was a sorry sight, and when the people saw the spectacle he presented they laughed again. "If I was you I'd sow seeds in that there mud you've got on you; it'd be as good as 'arf a hacre of ground." This was the comment of a paper-seller. He resumed his calling, shouting, "Hecho! Fourth hedition! Hecho!" But some one else had a word to say. This was a girl who was selling flowers for button-holes. "You let me stick these 'ere flowers in that there sile you've just picked up. They'll grow like winkin'!"