第11章

Have you seen the Queen yet, and does she wear her crown at breakfast? You might get over the area railing at Buckingham Palace--it would be nothing for a girl like you to do--and see if you can find out.

To these letters Golly answered, in her own light-hearted way:--DEAR GRANKINS,--I haven't seen John much--but I think he's like the Private Secretary at the play--he "don't like London." Lordy! there-- I've let it out! I've been to a theayter. Nurse Jinny Jones and me scrouged into the pit one night without paying, "pertendin'," as we were in uniform, we had come to take out a "Lydy" that had fainted. Such larks! and such a glorious theayter! I'll tell you another time. Tell aunty the Queen's always out when I call. But that's nothing, everybody else is so affable and polite in London. Gentlemen--"real toffs," they call 'em-- whom you don't know from Adam--think nothing of speaking to you in thestreet. Why, Nurse Jinny says--but there another patient's going off who by rights oughter have died only to-morrow. "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow," as that barn-stormer actor said. But they're always calling for that giddy young thing,Your GOLLY.

Meantime, John Gale, having abruptly left Golly at the door of St. Barabbas' hospital, tactfully avoiding an unseemly altercation with the cab-driver regarding her exact fare, pursued his way thoughtfully to the residence of his uncle, the First Lord of the Admiralty. He found his Lordship in his bath-room. He was leaning over the bath-tub, which was half full of water, contemplating with some anxiety the model of a line-of- battle ship which was floating on it, bottom upward. "I don't think it can be quite right--do you?" he said, nervously grasping his nephew's hand as he pointed to the capsized vessel; "yet they always do it. Tell me!" he went on appealingly, "tell me, as a professing Christian and a Perfect Man--is it quite right?"