looking people, who were very civil and kind. A man with a black
face and a white jacket said he would tell us when we got to Custom
House, and he gave me his seat by the window, that I might look out.

What struck me as rather odd was that everybody in the third-class
carriage seemed to have bundles like ours, and yet they couldn't all
be running away. One thin woman with a very troublesome baby had
three. Perhaps it is because portmanteaus and things of that sort are
rather expensive.

Fred was opposite to me. It was a bright sunny morning, a fresh breeze
blew, and in the sunlight the backs of endless rows of shabby houses
looked more cheerful than usual, though very few of the gardens had
anything in them but dirt and cats, and very many of the windows had
the week's wash hanging out on strings and poles. The villages we had
passed on the canal banks all looked pretty and interesting, but I
think that most of the places we saw out of the window of the train
would look very ugly on a dull day.

I fancy there were poplar-trees at a place called Poplar, and that I
thought it must be called after them; but Fred says No, and we have
never been there since, so I cannot be sure about it. If not, I must
have dreamt it.

I did fall asleep in the corner, I know, I was so very much tired, and
we had had no breakfast, and I sat on the side where the wind blows
in, which I think helped to make me sleepy. I was wakened partly by
the pie-dish slipping off my lap, and partly by Fred saying in an
eager tone,

"Oh, Charlie! LOOK! _Are they all ships_?"

We stuffed our heads through the window, and my hat was nearly blown
away, so the man with the black face and the white jacket gave it to
the woman with the troublesome baby to take care of for me, and he
held us by our legs for fear we should fall out.

On we flew! There was wind enough in our faces to have filled the
barge-sail three times over, and Fred licked his lips and said, "I do
believe there's salt in it!"

But what he woke me up to show me drove me nearly wild. When I had
seen a couple of big barges lying together with their two bare masts
leaning towards each other I used to think how dignified and beautiful
they looked. But here were hundreds of masts, standing as thick as
tree-trunks in a fir-wood, and they were not bare poles, but lofty and
slender, and crossed by innumerable yards, and covered with ropes in
orderly profusion, which showed in the sunshine as co