Pomonas Travels | Page 7

seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going
to let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I
determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me
have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful a
look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a
countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose,
her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the
dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each
second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so
let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I
didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind
on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about
rain until some English person first mentioned it.
But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and
exuded bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to
think that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the
seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so sudden
that it startled me; but not one of those English people mentioned that
the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so neither did Jone or
I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we tried to smile as if
we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being watered and
feeling all the better for it.
I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful,

nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know
you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but as it
was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be considered
natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town, with two
more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd better go
straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out for,
although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see
about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he
would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to
this, would be an advertisement for his coach.
When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up
his horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his
horn until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a
clank and a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out
marched the head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two
under-porters with red coats, and down jumped the horner and put up
his ladder, and Jone and I got down, after giving the coachman
half-a-crown, and receiving from the passengers a combined gaze of
differentialism which had been wholly wanting before. The men in the
red coats looked disappointed when they saw we had no baggage, but
the great doors was flung open and we went straight up to the clerk's
desk.
When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was
always danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the
better of him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good
enough for anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first
thing that was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by
getting a first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything
convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other
rooms, and the next morning we went there.
When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the
glass and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in,
from being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever
let such a person as me have a room at their hotel."

"It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and
mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with
her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most
people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and
be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty."
"I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was.
We hadn't been at