Things really were becoming serious; midnight was approaching. I had not the remotest idea where we were, and the passers-by became more and more infrequent, lights vanished from windows, few cabs were seen and the world was evidently going to bed. The fog was rapidly extinguishing my voice, and anxiety quenching my courage. M's curls hung limp and wild about her face, and even M's spirits began to fail. "I am afraid we _are_ lost," she whispered in my ear. "Not a doubt of it." "The man _must_ be tipsy, after all." "That is evident." "What _will_ people think of us?" "That we are tipsy also." "What _shall_ we do?" "Nothing but sit here and drift about till morning. The man has probably tumbled off; this dreadful horse is evidently wound up and won't stop till he has run down; the fog is increasing, and nothing will bring us to a halt but a collision with some other shipwrecked Yankee, as lost and miserable as we are." "Oh, L, don't be sarcastic and grim now! Do exert yourself and land somewhere. Go to a hotel. This horrid man must know where the Langham is." "I doubt if he knows any thing, and I am sure that eminently respectable house would refuse to admit such a pair of frights as we are, at this disreputable hour. No, we must go on till something happens to save us. We have discovered the secret of perpetual motion, and that is some comfort." M groaned, I laughed, the ghostly horse sneezed, and I think the driver snored. When things are pretty comfortable I am apt to croak, but when every thing is tottering on the verge of annihilation I usually feel rather jolly. Such being the perversity of my fallen nature, I began to enjoy myself at this period, and nearly drove poor M out of her wits by awful or whimsical suggestions and pictures of our probable fate. It was so very absurd that I really could not help seeing the funny side of the predicament, and M was the best fun of all, she looked so like a dilapidated Ophelia with her damp locks, a blue rigolette all awry, her white gloves tragically clasped, and her pale countenance bespattered with the mud that lay thick on the wooden boot and flew freely from the wheels. I had my laugh out and then tried to mend matters. What could we do? My first impulse was to stir up the sleeping wretch above, and this I did by energetically twitching the reins that hung loosely before our noses like the useless rudder of this lost ship. "Young man, if you don't wake up and take us to Colville Gardens as quickly as possible, I shall report you to-morrow. I've got your number, and I shall get my friend, Mr. Peter Taylor, of Aubrey House, to attend to the matter. He's an M.P., and will see that you are fined for attempting to drive a cab when you know nothing of London."