His feet, which are large and handsome, but bright pink with the
keen morning air, are bare, except for sandals of leather. (It was
the only time that we saw anyone in Utopia with bare feet.) He
salutes us with a scroll-like waving of his stick, and falls in with
our slower paces.

"Climbers, I presume?" he says, "and you scorn these trams of
theirs? I like you. So do I! Why a man should consent to be dealt
with as a bale of goods holding an indistinctive ticket--when God
gave him legs and a face--passes my understanding."

As he speaks, his staff indicates the great mechanical road that
runs across the gorge and high overhead through a gallery in the
rock, follows it along until it turns the corner, picks it up as a
viaduct far below, traces it until it plunges into an arcade through
a jutting crag, and there dismisses it with a spiral whirl. "_No_!"
he says.

He seems sent by Providence, for just now we had been discussing how
we should broach our remarkable situation to these Utopians before
our money is spent.

Our eyes meet, and I gather from the botanist that I am to open our
case.

I do my best.

"You came from the other side of space!" says the man in the crimson
cloak, interrupting me. "Precisely! I like that--it's exactly my
note! So do I! And you find this world strange! Exactly my case! We