After our dinner, Mother went up to her room and put on her hat, and told me to go to mine and to put on my Shanter. I didn't intrude on her privacy. I daresay she was saying a long good-bye to her old home, as I was. I filled my pockets with mementoes. I took Ernie Fynes' list of horses--for after all he is the only boy I ever loved, and it is my only love-letter. I wondered what Mother would take? However, she came out of her room smiling, and her pockets didn't stick out a bit. She is calm in the face of danger; just as she was that awful day when I supplied a fresh lot of methylated to a dying flame under our tea-kettle straight from the bottle, and she had to put out the large fire I had started unconsciously. "Goodness, child, how you do bulge! Empty your pocket at once!" I did as I was told. We must buy pencils over there, I suppose, but I held on to the toothbrush. "Now you are not to talk all the way there and tire me!" Mother said, as we got into a hansom. "I won't; but do tell me where we are to meet Mr. Aix?" "Mr. Aix? I am sure I don't know. He will be about, I suppose, unless they sit on his head to keep him quiet! Don't talk." She put her hand up to her head, not because she had a headache, but to keep her hair in place, as it was a windy night, and I couldn't help thinking of the crossing that I had never crossed, only heard what Ariadne said about it, when she came back from her wedding-tour. Ariadne tried seven cures, and none of them saved her. It was ridiculously early, only seven o'clock. As we drove on and on I began to hope that we were going to lose Mr. Aix and go alone. But it was no good. We stopped at a door that certainly wasn't the door of a station, and Mr. Aix came out to meet us. He squeezed our hands, and his hand was hot, while his face was as white as a table-cloth. We went in, up a dirty passage, and into a great cellar where there seemed to be building constructions going on, for I noticed lots of scaffolding and that sort of thing. There were also great pieces of canvas stretched on wood, and one very big bit lying there propped against the wall had a landscape of an orchard on it. "What is it?" I asked one of the people standing about--a man in a white jacket. "That, Missie--that's the back cloth to the first scene," and then he mumbled something, about flies and their wings, that I did not chose to show I didn't understand. "Oh, yes, quite so," I said to the dirty man in the white (it had once been) jacket, and got hold of Mr. Aix, who was mooning about in evening dress, quite unsuitable for a journey. But he was always an untidy sort of inappropriate man. "Where's my mother?" "Oh, your mother! Yes, she's gone to her room. I'll take you to her."