low, an electrical shudder of intense
excitement ran through the entire compartment. When I stooped to tie my
shoe another current was set in motion, and when I took Charles Reade's
White Lies from my portmanteau they glanced at one another as if to say,
'Would that we could see in what language the book is written!' As a
travelling mystery I reached my highest point at Oxford, for there I
purchased a small basket of plums from a boy who handed them in at the
window of the carriage. After eating a few, I offered the rest to a
dowdy elderly woman on my left who was munching dry biscuits from a
paper bag. 'What next?' was the facial expression of the entire company.
My neighbour accepted the plums, but hid them in her bag; plainly
thinking them poisoned, and believing me to be a foreign conspirator,
conspiring against England through the medium of her inoffensive person.
In the course of the four-hours' journey, I could account for the
strange impression I was making only upon the theory that it is unusual
to comport oneself in a first-class manner in a third-class carriage.
All my companions chanced to be third-class by birth as well as by
ticket, and the Englishwoman who is born third-class is sometimes
deficient in imagination.

Upon arriving at Great Belvern (which must be pronounced 'Bevern') I
took a trap, had my luggage put on in front, and start on my quest for
lodgings in West Belvern, five miles distant. Several addresses had been
given me by Hilda Mellifica, who has spent much time in this region, and
who begged me to use her name. I told the driver that I wished to find
a clean, comfortable lodging, with the view mentioned in the guide-book,
and with a purple clematis over the door, if possible. The last point
astounded him to such a degree that he had, I think, a serious idea of
giving me into custody. (I should not be so eccentrically spontaneous
with these people, if they did not feed my sense of humour by their
amazement.)

We visited Holly House, Osborne, St. James, Victoria, and Albert houses,
Tank Villa, Poplar Villa, Rose, Brake, and Thorn Villas, as well as
Hawthorn, Gorse, Fern, Shrubbery, and Providence Cottages. All had
apartments, but many were taken, and many more had rooms either dark
and stuffy or without view. Holly House was my first stopping-place. Why
will a woman voluntarily call her place by a name which she can never
pronounce? It is my landlady's misfortune that she is named 'Obbs, and