Resolved now to ask her way at every step, she contrived, by minutely following directions, to find and to cross Finsbury Circus, whence she was quickly in Moorgate Street, and at once discovered the City and South London Railway Station. Continuing to seek information for the Islington lift, the Islington platform, and the Islington train, she would not budge an inch until she had been thoroughly posted up. Once more in a Tube car, and by way of Old Street, and the City Road, she at last arrived at the “Angel,” and felt as if she had indeed reached the gates of heaven! Milner Street was close by, and she was soon at her aunt’s house, but, alas! not to breakfast, for it was nearing twelve o’clock. That relation, an impatient woman, tired of waiting, had gone out for the day, and had left no message! This was too much for the little woman, it was the last straw, and flinging herself on the sofa, she thought sympathetically of how in the past “A north-country maid up to London had strayed, Although with her nature it did not agree; She wept and she sighed, and she bitterly cried, I wish once again in the north I could be.” Quickly she returned to Shepherd’s Bush, _viâ_ the Bank and the Twopenny Tube, in the latter finding a totally different class of people from those she had travelled with in the morning, and plenty of room for everybody. She went back home the next day, sacrificing her seat for the Coronation procession; and she registered a vow that if ever she came to London again she would study closely the route for any proposed expedition as carefully as if she were on an “unaccompanied” Continental tour. She kept her vow; and, I believe, eventually, her “bump of locality” became considerably developed. The moral of this practically true sketch is, that in view of the complicated system of metropolitan Tubes and Undergrounds, no one without an experienced escort, unless endowed with a talent for locality, can hope to get about London without trouble and difficulty. In fact, a _Metropolitan Bradshaw_, or _Metropolitan Guide to Underground London_ is urgently needed. CHAPTER IX _LONDON’S TANGLED TUBES_ “Tangled in the fold of dire necessity.”--MILTON. THE TANGLE To inflict upon the readers of this book a map of existing and projected railways in London would be cruel; and for them to try to master it would be torture worthy of the Inquisition, with loss of reason as the inevitable result. Roughly speaking, the lines above and below ground stream inwards from the outskirts, after the fashion of the tramways; with this marked difference that there is a direct communication from east to west by the Central Railway, and an Inner Circle route engirdling the middle portion of Greater London.