About noon Miss Leaf proposed calling for the hotel bill. Its length
so alarmed the country ladies that Hilary suggested not staying to
dine, but going immediately in search of lodgings.

"What, without a gentleman! Impossible! I always understood ladies
could go nowhere in London without a gentleman!"

"We shall come very ill off then, Selina. But any how I mean to try.
You know the region where, we have heard, lodgings are cheapest and
best--that is, best for us. It can not be far from here. Suppose I
start at once?"

"What, alone?" cried Johanna, anxiously.

"No, dear, I'll take the map with me, and Elizabeth. She is not
afraid."

Elizabeth smiled, and rose, with that air of dogged devotedness with
which she would have prepared to follow Miss Hilary to the North
Pole, if necessary. So, after a few minutes of arguing with Selina,
who did not press her point overmuch, since she herself had not to
commit the impropriety of the expedition. After a few minutes more of
hopeless lingering about--till even Miss Leaf said they had better
wait no longer--mistress and maid took a farewell nearly as pathetic
as if they had been really Arctic voyagers, and plunged right into
the dusty glare and hurrying crowd of the "sunny side" of Holborn in
July.

A strange sensation, and yet there was something exhilarating in it.