Americans -- England -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
'She isn't today, Mr. Mafferton. She's lying down. I did my best to
persuade her to come out with me, and she wouldn't. But I'm going
sight-seeing this very minute, and if you would like to come too, I'm
sure I shall be very glad.'
Mr. Mafferton looked a little uncomfortable. 'Where were you thinking of
going?' he asked.
'To Madame Tussaud's,' I said. 'You go by the Underground Railway
from here. Get in at St. James's Park Station, and out at Baker Street
Station--about twenty-five minutes in the cars. And you are not,'
I said, remembering what I had been told, 'under any consideration
whatever, to get in or out of the train while it is moving.'
Mr. Mafferton laughed. 'Lady Torquilin has been coaching you,' he said:
but he still looked uncomfortable, and thinking he felt, perhaps, like
an intruder upon my plans, and wishing to put him at his ease, I said:
'It would really be very kind of you to come, Mr. Mafferton, for even at
school I never could remember English history, and now I've probably got
your dynasties worse mixed up than ever. It would be a great advantage
to go with somebody who knows all the dates, and which kings usurped
their thrones, and who they properly belonged to.'
Mr. Mafferton laughed again. 'I hope you don't expect all that of me,'
he said. 'But if you are quite sure we couldn't rout Lady Torquilin out,
I will take you to Madame Tussaud's with the greatest pleasure, Miss
Wick.'
'I'm quite sure,' I told Mr. Mafferton, cheerfully. 'She said all those
wax people, with their idiotic expressions, this afternoon would simply
finish her up!'--and Mr. Mafferton said Lady Torquilin put things very
quaintly, didn't she? And we went together into one of those great
echoing caverns in the sides of the streets that led down flights of
dirty steps, past the man who punches the tickets, and widen out into
that border of desolation with a fierce star burning and brightening in
the blackness of the farther end, which is a platform of the Underground
Railway.
'This,' said I to Mr. Mafferton as we walked up and down waiting for our
train, 'is one of the things I particularly wanted to see.'
'The penny weighing-machine?' asked Mr. Mafferton, for I had stopped to
look at that.
'The whole thing,' said I--'the Underground system. But this is
interesting in itself,' I added, putting a penny in, and stepping on the
machine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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