That was a golden journey, a kind of voyage to silken Samarcand and cedared Lebanon, allowing of course for reduction according to scale. So miraculously were their hearts attuned to venturing, that for one rapt hour they drank deep of poetry and romance this glorious midday of July. Bus 49 knew its business thoroughly, no bus better. Instead of turning pretty sharp to the left into that complacent purlieu Portland Place, as a bus of less experience might have done in order to follow the line of flight of some mythical crow or other, it chose to go on and on, past Madame Tussaud's, the Hotel Great Central, and then by a series of minor but hardly less historic landmarks along Edgware Road to the Marble Arch, thence via Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner. No doubt Bus 49 had ideas. The ordinary machine of commerce would have got from Euston to Piccadilly Circus in two shakes of a duck's tail. Not so this accomplished metropolitan, this gorgeous midday of July. From Hyde Park Corner it proceeded to Victoria, thence via the Army and Navy Stores to the Houses of Parliament, down Whitehall, past the lions and Horatio, Viscount Nelson, past the Crédit Lyonnais, up the Haymarket and so at last to Swan and Edgar's corner, where William and Melia dismounted, thrilled as never before in all their lives. Piccadilly Circus, all the same, was a shade disappointing. It was not quite so grand as they expected. The Criterion was just opposite, but they looked in vain for the King's residence. There did not appear to be a sign of that. Bill, however, noticed a policeman, and decided to make inquiries. "I want Buckingham Palace, please," said the wearer of the King's uniform. Constable X 20, an intelligent officer, told the gallant corporal to walk along Piccadilly, to which famous thoroughfare he pointed with professional majesty, to turn down the street of Saint James, to keep right on until he got to the bottom and then to ask again. The constable was thanked for his lucidity and William and Melia proceeded according to instructions. Along Piccadilly itself their progress was a triumph. For, as Melia was quick to observe, all the best people saluted Bill. Of course they could tell by the stripe on his sleeve that he had been made a corporal, but such open, public and official recognition of his merit was intensely gratifying. Brass-hatted, beribboned, extraordinarily distinguished looking warriors were as punctilious as could be in saluting Bill. Those placed less highly, the rank and file, the common herd, paid him less attention, but what were these in the scale of an infinitely larger and nobler tribute? By the time William and Melia turned down Saint James's street, had an observant visitor from Mars had the privilege of walking behind them he would have been bound to conclude that the most important man in the Empire was Corporal Hollis.