not quite "helpless foreigners" when we steamed away from St.
Catherine's Docks, and found ourselves on the following day in
Antwerp, amid what seemed to us a very Babel of conflicting tongues.
Alas for our carefully spoken French, articulated laboriously! We were
lost in that swirl of disputing luggage-porters, and could not
understand a word! But Miss Marryat was quite equal to the occasion,
being by no means new to travelling, and her French stood the test
triumphantly, and steered us safely to a hotel. On the morrow we
started again through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, the town which lies on
the borders of the exquisite scenery of which the Siebengebirge and
Rolandseck serve as the magic portal. Our experiences in Bonn were not
wholly satisfactory. Dear Auntie was a maiden lady, looking on all
young men as wolves to be kept far from her growing lambs. Bonn was a
university town, and there was a mania just then prevailing there for
all things English. Emma was a plump, rosy, fair-haired typical
English maiden, full of frolic and harmless fun; I a very slight,
pale, black-haired girl, alternating between wild fun and extreme
pensiveness. In the boarding-house to which we went at first--the
"Château du Rhin," a beautiful place overhanging the broad, blue
Rhine--there chanced to be staying the two sons of the late Duke of
Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas and Lord Charles, with their tutor.
They had the whole drawing-room floor: we a sitting-room on the ground
floor and bedrooms above. The lads discovered that Miss Marryat did
not like her "children" to be on speaking terms with any of the "male
sect."

Here was a fine source of amusement. They would make their horses
caracole on the gravel in front of our window; they would be just
starting for their ride as we went for walk or drive, and would salute
us with doffed hat and low bow; they would waylay us on our way