respectable restaurant, no doubt.'

Twilight began to obscure the distance. Here and there a house-front
slowly marked itself with points of flame, shaping to wreath,
festoon, or initials of Royalty. Nancy looked eagerly about her,
impatient for the dark, wishing the throng would sweep her away. In
Pall Mall, Barmby felt it incumbent upon him to name the several
clubs, a task for which he was inadequately prepared. As he stood
staring in doubt at one of the coldly insolent facades, Jessica
gazing in the same direction, Nancy saw that her moment had come.
She darted off, struggled through a moving crowd, and reached the
opposite pavement. All she had now to do was to press onward with
the people around her; save by chance, she could not possibly be
discovered.

Alarm at her daring troubled her for a few minutes. As a matter of
course Barmby would report this incident to her father,--unless
she plainly asked him not to do so, for which she had no mind. Yet
what did it matter? She had escaped to enjoy herself, and the sense
of freedom soon overcame anxieties. No one observed her solitary
state; she was one of millions walking about the streets because it
was Jubilee Day, and every moment packed her more tightly among the
tramping populace. A procession, this, greatly more significant than
that of Royal personages earlier in the day. Along the main
thoroughfares of mid-London, wheel-traffic was now suspended;
between the houses moved a double current of humanity, this way and
that, filling the whole space, so that no vehicle could possibly
have made its way on the wonted track. At junctions, pickets of
police directed progress; the slowly advancing masses wheeled to
left or right at word of command, carelessly obedient. But for an