The reader may now be prepared to learn that it was not Mr. Timothy Cockayne, late of Lambeth, who had planned the family's journey to Paris. Mrs. Cockayne had projected the expedition. Everybody went to Paris now-a-days, and you looked so very stupid if you had to confess in a drawing-room that you had never been. She was sure there was not another family on Clapham Common, of their station, who had not been. Besides, it would exercise the girls' French. If Mr. Cockayne could only consent to tear himself away from board-meetings, and devote a little time to his own flesh and blood. They would go alone, and not trouble him, only what would their neighbours say to see them start off alone, as though they'd nobody in the world to care a fig about them. At any rate, they didn't want people to know they were neglected. Now Mr. Cockayne had never had the most distant idea of leaving the ladies of his family to go alone to Paris. But it pleased his wife to put the case in this pleasant way, and he never interfered with her pleasures. He wanted very much to see Paris again, for he had never been on the banks of the Seine since 1840, when he made a flying visit to examine some new patent soap-boiling apparatus. He was ordered about by both mother and daughters, by boat and railway. He was reproached fifty times for his manners in insisting on going the Dieppe route. He was loaded with parcels and baskets and rugs, and was soundly rated all the way from the railway station to the Grand Hotel, on the Boulevard des Capucines, for having permitted the Custom House officers to turn over Mrs. Cockayne's boxes, as she said, "in the most impudent manner; but they saw she was without protection."