Robin raised his eyebrows incredulously. 'Sense in geography! Why, Syd, if there is a thing that's utterly abominable and senseless, that's it. To have to remember what's the capital of what, and where rivers "take their source," and to find out the latitude and longitude of wretched places where one never goes, and never wants to go!' 'But that is the very thing,' said Sydney. 'I do want to go there; and, what is more, I mean to go some day when I'm a sailor, and sail round the world. I want to go to China and India and South America--Egypt, of course (not Europe. I don't care for stupid, civilised places).' 'Oh Syd!' interrupted Silvia's deliberate little voice. 'Not care to see Edinburgh or Rome! Think of Horatius. Don't you care to see places where things happened long ago, or where celebrated people used to live? I did so like going over the Tower last year, and seeing where the poor little princes were murdered, and where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, and putting my hand on the very same stone that perhaps his had been on.' 'But _why_?' asked Sydney. 'It makes no difference. The stone looks just the same, whether he touched it or not.' Silvia could not tell why. She could only knit her brows, and repeat in a meditative tone her favourite phrase, 'Somehow--I don't know,' till Sydney grew tired of waiting for an answer, and began again. 'Well, all that I can say is, that I don't care a farthing for the Tower of London, or Horatius, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or any of those people. I never can remember which is which, or what they did. I want to travel, and discover new countries, and fight wild beasts and savages, and see all sorts of extraordinary plants and animals, and forests full of poisonous snakes and fire-flies, and tremendously big ferns, and humming-birds, and get into all sorts of dangers, and go where no one has ever been before. Oh, that would be glorious!' 'Somehow,' began Silvia, rousing herself from a reverie, and going on rather languidly with her slate-cleaning duties--'I don't know--(well, you needn't laugh whenever I open my mouth, Sydney). I mean to say, I should like to have the "goloshes of fortune."' 'What! Like the people in Robin's fairy-book?' said little Dolly. 'Yes: who always got whatever they wished for, directly they put the goloshes on. I should like to jump back into the Middle Ages, like the old Professor.' 'But you know, Silvia,' Robin remarked, with a very sagacious look in his round brown eyes: 'you know how much the Professor hated the Middle Ages when he got into them.' 'That,' rejoined Silvia, 'was because he managed so badly. He didn't know he was in the Middle Ages at all. I should know where I was, and not be surprised at everything looking different and odd. I should keep wishing myself first in one century and then in another, I think----'