Rollo in Holland | Page 7

to select one that had a good horse. The distance was considerable that they had to go, and besides Mr. Parkman knew that his wife liked always to go fast. So when he had selected the best looking horse, he made a signal to the driver. The driver immediately left the stand, and drove over to the sidewalk where Mr. Parkman and his party were waiting.
Mr. Parkman immediately opened the door of the cab to allow his wife to go in; but she, instead of entering, began to look scrutinizingly into it, and hung back.
"Is this a nice cab?" said she. "It seems to me that I have seen nicer cabs than this.
"Let us look," she added, "and see if there is not a better one somewhere along the line."
The cabman, looking down from his exalted seat behind the vehicle, said that there was not a nicer cab than his in London.
"O, of course," said Mrs. Parkman. "They always say that. But I can find a nicer one, I'm sure, somewhere in the line."
So saying she began to move on. Mr. Parkman gave the cabman a silver sixpence--which is equal to a New York shilling--to compensate him for having been called off from his station, and then followed his wife across the street to the side where the cabs were standing. Mrs. Parkman led the way all down the line, examining each hack as she passed it; but she did not find any one that looked as well as the first.
[Illustration: THE HANSOM CAB.]
"After all," said she, "we might as well go back and take the first one." So she turned and began to retrace her steps--the two gentlemen accompanying her. But when they got back they found that the one which Mr. Parkman had first selected was gone. It had been taken by another customer.
Mr. George was now entirely out of patience; but he controlled himself sufficiently to suppress all outward manifestation of it, only saying that he believed he would not wait any longer.
"I will go down to the river," said he, "and take a boat, and when you get a carriage you can go by land. I will wait for you at the entrance to the tunnel."
So he went away; and as soon as he turned the corner of the street he snapped his fingers and nodded his head with the air of a man who has just made a very lucky escape.
"I thank my stars," said he to himself, "that I have not got such a lady as that to take care of. Handsome as she is, I would not have her for a travelling companion on any account whatever."
It was from having witnessed several such exhibitions of character as this that Mr. George had expressed himself so strongly to Rollo on the subject of joining Mr. Parkman and his wife in making the tour of Holland.
But notwithstanding Mr. George's determination that he would not travel in company with such a lady, it seemed to be decreed that he should do so, for he left London about a week after this to go to Holland with Rollo alone; and though he postponed setting out for several days, so as to allow Mr. and Mrs. Parkman time to get well under way before them, he happened to fall in with them several times in the course of the journey. The first time that he met with them was in crossing the Straits of Dover.
There are several ways by which a person may go to Holland from London. The cheapest is to take a steamer, by which means you go down the Thames, and thence pass directly across the German Ocean to the coast of Holland. But that makes quite a little voyage by sea, during which almost all persons are subject to a very disagreeable kind of sickness, on account of the small size of the steamers, and the short tossing motion of the sea that almost always prevails in the waters that lie around Great Britain.
So Mr. George and Rollo, who neither of them liked to be seasick, determined to go another way. They concluded to go down by railway to Dover, and then to go to Calais across the strait, where the passage is the shortest. Mr. and Mrs. Parkman had set off several days before them, and Mr. George supposed that by this time they were far on their way towards Holland. But they had been delayed by Mrs. Parkman's desire to go to Brighton, which is a great watering place on the coast, not far from Dover. There Mr. and Mrs. Parkman had spent several days, and it so happened that in going from Brighton to Dover they met, at the junction, the train that was bringing Mr. George and Rollo down from