American family which then first proved them. The fragmentary
outwanderers who now visited London, after an absence of twenty-two
years, did not take into account the fact that their apartment of long
ago was the fine event of the search, prolonged for weeks, of two
friends, singularly intelligent and rarely versed in London; they took
it as a type, and expected to drive directly to its fellow. They drove
indirectly to unnumbered lodgings unlike it and unworthy of its memory,
and it was not until after three days that they were able to fix upon a
lodging that appeared the least remote from their ideal. Then, in a
street not too far from Mayfair, and of the quality of a self-respectful
dependant of Belgravia, they set up their breathless Lares and panting
Penates, and settled down with a sense of comfort that grew upon them
day by day. The place undeniably had its charm, if not its merit. The
drawing-room chairs were in a proper pattern of brocade, and, though
abraded at their edges and corners, were of a tasteful frame; the
armchairs, covered like the sofa in a cheerful cretonne, lent the
parting guest the help of an outward incline; the sofa, heaped with
cushions, could not conceal a broken spring, though it braved it out
with the consciousness of having been sat upon by a royal princess who
had once taken tea in that lodging. But the other appointments,
including a pretty writing-desk and a multitude of china plates almost
hiding the wall-paper, were unfractured, and the little dining-room was
very cosey. After breakfast it had the habit of turning itself into a
study, where one of the outwanderers used to set himself down and ask
himself with pen and ink what he honestly thought and felt about this
England which he had always been more or less bothering about. The
inquiry took time which he might better have spent in day-dreaming
before the prospect of the gray March heaven, with the combs of the
roofs and the chimney-pots mezzotinted against it. He might have more
profitably wasted his time even on the smoke-blackened yellow-brick