"Oh, you haven't any money, haven't you? would you like me to lend you half-a-crown or a suvering? I'm sure I'm game. 'Ow much does your ma allow you a week? a hapenny and a smack on the 'ead? If I was you I'd ask your nurse to take you out in the pram, and buy you lollipops,--go on, you mealy-faced young 'umbug!" Bertie almost wished he had not asked the way, but had been content to blunder on unaided. The flower-seller's voice was peculiarly audible; the passers by were more amused than Bertie was. It was his first experience of the characteristic eloquence of a certain class of Londoner; he would have been content if it had been his last. He went on, feeling somewhat smaller in his own esteem. Past the "Star and Garter," along the Kew road, never a very cheerful thoroughfare. Bertie thought it particularly cheerless then. Through Gunnersbury, and Chiswick, and Turnham Green, past the green itself, past Duke's Avenue, which is already a caricature of its former self, and threatens to be an avenue no more. Past where, not so very long ago, the toll bar used to stand, though there is no memorial of its presence now. Past the carriage manufactory; past the terminus of that singular railway which boasts of a single carriage and a single engine,--said railway being two if not three miles long. Into King Street, Hammersmith, and when he had got so far upon his journey the lad began to tire. The evening was closing in. The lamps were lighted; the shops were ablaze with gas; the streets were crowded. But Bertie did not know where he was; he was standing on strange ground. He wondered, rather wearily, if this were London; but after his recent experience with the vendor of bouquets he was afraid to ask. He was hungry again, and began to look into the shop windows with anxious eyes. Fivepence would not go far. He tramped wearily on, right through King Street. At a costermonger's stall he bought a pennyworth of apples, and munched them as he went. His capital was now reduced to fourpence, and night was come, and he was on the threshold of the great city--that Land of Golden Dreams. Chapter XIV IN TROUBLE Through the Broadway, along the Hammersmith Road, on, and on, and on. Every step he took made the next seem harder. He was conscious that he could hardly walk much more. The crowd, the lights, the strangeness of the place, confused him. He wondered where he was. Was this London? and was it nothing else but streets? and was this the Land of Golden Dreams? When he reached the Cedars, where the great pile of school buildings is now standing, he saw, peering through the railings, a little arab of the streets. To him he applied for information. "Is this London?"