An American Girl in London. Duncan Sara Jeannette

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СКАЧАТЬ with a rabbit, a highly improbable thing for the rabbit to keep. And I went downstairs feeling quite amused and happy, and determined to stay amused and happy. My unexpected reward for this came at dinner, when I discovered my neighbours to be two delightful ladies from St. Paul, Minn., with whom I conversed sociably there, and later in the drawing-room. They had known Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; but what to my eyes gave them an added charm was their amiable readiness to know me. I was made to promise that I would send them my address when I was settled, and to this day I suffer from unquieted pangs of conscience because I failed to keep my word.

      By ten o'clock next morning I was in Cockspur Street, Pall Mall, looking for the 'Lady Guides' Association.' The name in white letters on the window struck me oddly when I found it. The idea, the institution it expressed, seemed so grotesquely of to-day there in the heart of old London, where almost everything you see talks of orthodoxy and the approval of the centuries. It had the impertinence that a new building has going up among your smoky old piles of brick and mortar. You will understand my natural sympathy with it. The minute I went in I felt at home.

      There were several little desks in several little adjoining compartments, with little muslin curtains in front of them, and ladies and ink-bottles inside, like a row of shrouded canary-cages. Two or three more ladies, without their things on, were running round outside, and several others, with their things on, were being attended to. I saw only one little man, who was always getting out of the ladies' way, and didn't seem properly to belong there. There was no label attached, so I couldn't tell what use they made of him, but I should like to have known.

      The desks were all lettered plainly – one 'Lady Guides,' the next 'Tickets for the Theatre,' and so on; but, of course, I went to the first one to inquire, without taking any notice of that – people always do. I think, perhaps, the lady was more polite in referring me to the proper one than the man would have been. She smiled, and bowed encouragingly as she did it, and explained particularly, 'the lady with the eyeglasses and her hair done up high – do you see?' I saw, and went to the right lady. She smiled too, in a real winning way, looking up from her entrybook, and leaning forward to hear what I had to say. Then she came into my confidence, as it were, at once. 'What you want,' she said, 'is a boarding-house or private hotel. We have all the best private hotels on our books, but in your case, being alone, what I should advise would be a thoroughly well-recommended, first-class boarding-house.'

      I said something about a private family – 'Or a private family,' added the lady, acquiescently. 'Now, we can give you whichever you prefer. Suppose,' she said, with the kindly interested counsel of good-fellowship, dropping her voice a little, 'I write you out several addresses of both kinds, then you can just see for yourself' – and the lady looked at me over her eyeglasses most agreeably.

      'Why, yes!' I said. 'I think that's a very good idea!'

      'Well now, just wait a minute!' the lady said, turning over the pages of another big book. 'There's a great deal, as you probably know, in locality in London. We must try and get you something in a nice locality. Piccadilly, for instance, is a very favourite locality – I think we have something in Half-Moon Street – '

      'Gracious!' I said. 'No! not Half-Moon Street, please. I – I've been there. I don't like that locality!'

      'Really!' said the lady, with surprise. 'Well, you wouldn't believe what the rents are in Half-Moon Street! But we can easily give you something else – the other side of the Park, perhaps!'

      'Yes.' I said, earnestly. 'Quite the other side, if you please!'

      'Well,' returned the lady, abstractedly running her finger down the page, 'there's Mrs. Pragge, in Holland Park Gardens – have you any objection to children? – and Miss Camblewell, in Lancaster Gate, very clean and nice. I think we'll put them down. And then two or three private ones – excuse me one minute. There! I think among those,' with sudden gravity, 'you ought to find something suitable at from two to three-and-a-half guineas per week; but if you do not, be sure to come in again. We always like to give our clients satisfaction.' The lady smiled again in that pardonable, endearing way; and I was so pleased with her, and with myself, and with the situation, and felt such warm comfort as the result of the interview, that I wanted badly to shake hands with her when I said Good-morning. But she was so engaged that I couldn't, and had to content myself with only saying it very cordially. As I turned to go I saw a slightly blank expression come over her face, and she coughed with some embarrassment, leaning forward as if to speak to me again. But I was too near the door, so one of the ladies who were running about detained me apologetically.

      'There is a – a charge,' she said, 'of two-and-sixpence. You did not know.' So I went back uncomfortably and paid. 'Thanks, yes!' said the lady in the cage. 'Two-and-six! No, that is two shillings, a florin, you see – and that is four – it's half-a-crown we want, isn't it?' very amiably, considering all the trouble I was giving her. 'Perhaps you are not very well accustomed to our English currency yet,' as I finally counted out one shilling, two sixpences, a threepence, and six halfpennies. If there is a thing in this country that needs reforming more than the House of Lords – but there, it isn't to be supposed that you would like my telling you about it. At all events, I managed in the end to pay my very proper fee to the Lady Guides' Association, and I sincerely hope that any of its members who may happen to read this chapter will believe that I never endeavoured to evade it. The slight awkwardness of the mistake turned out rather pleasantly for me, because it led me into further conversation with the lady behind the eyeglasses, in which she asked me whether I wouldn't like to look over their establishment. I said Yes, indeed; and one of the outside ladies, a very capable-looking little person, with a round face and short, curly hair, was told off to take me upstairs. I hadn't been so interested for a long time. There was the club-room, where ladies belonging to the Association could meet or make appointments with other people, or write letters or read the papers, and the restaurant, where they could get anything they wanted to eat. I am telling you all this because I've met numbers of people in London who only know enough about the Lady Guides' Association to smile when it is mentioned, and to say, 'Did you go there?' in a tone of great amusement, which, considering it is one of your own institutions, strikes me as curious. And it is such an original, personal, homelike institution, like a little chirping busy nest between the eaves of the great unconcerned City offices and warehouses, that it is interesting to know more about than that, I think. The capable little lady seemed quite proud of it as she ushered me from one room into the next, and especially of the bedrooms, which were divided from one another by pretty chintz hangings, and where at least four ladies, 'arriving strange from the country, and elsewhere,' could be tucked away for the night. That idea struck me as perfectly sweet, and I wished very sincerely I had known of it before. It seemed to offer so many more advantages than the Métropole. Of course. I asked any number of questions about the scope and working of the Association, and the little lady answered them all with great fluency. It was nice to hear of such extended usefulness – how the Lady Guides engage governesses, or servants, or seats at the theatre, and provide dinners and entertainments, and clothes to wear at them, and suitable manners; and take care of children by the day – I do not remember whether the little lady said they undertook to bring them up – and furnish eyes and understanding, certified, to all visitors in London, at 'a fixed tariff' – all except gentlemen unaccompanied by their families. 'Such clients,' the little lady said, with a shade of sadness, I fancied, that there should be any limitation to the benevolence of the Association, 'the Lady Guide is compelled to decline. It is a great pity – we have so many gentleman-applicants, and there would be, of course, no necessity for sending young lady-guides out with them – we have plenty of elderly ones, widows and so on; but' – and here the little lady grew confidentially deprecating – 'it is thought best not to. You see, it would get into the papers, and the papers might chaff, and, of course, in our position we can't afford to be made ridiculous. But it is a great pity!' – and the little lady sighed again. I said I thought it was, and asked if any special case had been made of any special entreaty. 'One,' she admitted, in a justifying tone. 'A gentleman from Japan. He told us he never would have come to England if he had not heard of our СКАЧАТЬ