It was a conversation very unsuitable to London Streets--but then these were raw Scotch fisherman, who had not yet learned how absurd it is to suppose ourselves come from anything greater than ourselves, and had no conception of the liberty it confers on a man to know that he is the child of a protoplasm, or something still more beautifully small. At length a policeman directed them to a Scotch eating-house, where they fared after their country’s fashions, and from the landlady gathered directions by which to guide themselves towards Curzon Street, a certain number in which Mr Soutar had given Malcolm as Lady Bellair’s address. The door was opened to Malcolm’s knock by a slatternly charwoman, who, unable to understand a word he said, would, but for its fine frank expression, have shut the door in his face. From the expression of hers, however, Malcolm suddenly remembered that he must speak English, and having a plentiful store of the book sort, he at once made himself intelligible in spite of tone and accent. It was, however, only a shifting of the difficulty, for he now found it nearly impossible to understand her. But by repeated questioning and hard listening he learnt at last that Lady Bellair had removed her establishment to Lady Lossie’s house in Portland Place. After many curious perplexities, odd blunders, and vain endeavours to understand shop signs and notices in the windows; after they had again and again imagined themselves back at a place they had left miles away; after many a useless effort to lay hold of directions given so rapidly that the very sense could not gather the sounds, they at length stood--not in Portland Place, but in front of Westminster Abbey. Inquiring what it was, and finding they could go in, they entered. For some moments not a word was spoken between them, but when they had walked slowly half-way up the nave, Malcolm turned and said, “Eh, Peter! sic a blessin’!” and Peter replied, “There canna be muckle o’ this i’ the warl’!” Comparing impressions afterwards, Peter said that the moment he stepped in, he heard the rush of the tide on the rocks of Scaurnose; and Malcolm declared he felt as if he had stepped out of the world into the regions of eternal silence. “What a mercy it maun be,” he went on, “to mony a cratur, in sic a whummle an’ a rum’le an’ a remish as this Lon’on, to ken ’at there is sic a cave howkit oot o’ the din, ’at he can gang intill an’ say his prayers intill! Man, Peter! I’m jist some feared whiles ’at the verra din i’ my lugs mayna ’maist drive the thoucht o’ God oot o’ me.” At length they found their way into Regent Street, and leaving its mean assertion behind, reached the stately modesty of Portland Place; and Malcolm was pleased to think the house he sought was one of those he now saw.