JOAN HARTLEY’S ideas of London, gathered from books and illustrated papers, were those of a town to which her uncle and aunt were utter strangers. Mr. William Carr knew Cornhill and the adjacent district thoroughly, and thirty or forty years before had made periodical descents upon the West-end. He left home at half-past eight every morning and returned every evening at five minutes to six, except on Saturdays, when he returned at ten minutes past three, and spent his half holiday in the dining-room reading an early edition of the evening paper. Any paragraphs relating to Royalty were read aloud to his wife, who knew not only all the members of the English Royal Family by name, but also those dignitaries abroad who had the happiness to be connected with it in marriage. She could in all probability have given the King himself much useful information as to the ages and fourth and fifth Christian names of some of the later and more remote members of his family. Her day was as regular and methodical as her husband’s. The morning was devoted to assisting and superintending the general servant for the time being; after dinner, at one o’clock, she retired upstairs to dress and went down to the shops to make a few purchases, returning in good time to give her husband tea. The early part of the evening was devoted to waiting for supper; the latter part to waiting for bed. During the first week of Joan’s visit an agreeable thrill was communicated to the household by preparations for an evening, or perhaps an afternoon and evening, in town. The event came off—in the third week of her stay—on a wet Thursday afternoon. Mrs. Carr and Joan got wet walking to the omnibus, and wetter still waiting at one corner of the Bank of England for Mr. Carr, who was getting wet at another. Mr. Carr, who was in holiday attire, was smoking a large cigar in honour of the occasion, which he extinguished upon entering an omnibus and re-lighted at the Zoological Gardens. By the aid of careful manipulation and the rain it lasted him until evening. They wound up an eventful day at a theatre, and Mr. Carr, being anxious to do the thing well, took them all the way home in a four-wheeler. A little sum in mental arithmetic, which he worked on the way and submitted to the cabman at the end of the journey, was found to be wrong. The outing was not repeated. Mrs. Carr went about for a day or two with the air of one who had returned from a long and fatiguing expedition; and her husband, when he returned from business the day following and changed into his slippers, paid such a warm tribute to the joys and comforts of home that his niece abandoned all ideas of any further jaunts. Wearied by the dulness and the monotony of the streets, she began to count the days till her return. Her father’s letters made no mention of it; but the Salthaven news in them only increased her eagerness.