sampan.

Having before I left Sydney been recommended to a quiet hotel in a
neighbourhood near the Strand, convenient both for sight-seeing and
business, I had my luggage conveyed thither, and prepared to make myself
comfortable for a time. Every day I waited eagerly for a letter from my
sweetheart, the more impatiently because its non-arrival convinced me
that they had not yet arrived in London. As it turned out, they had
delayed their departure from Naples for two days, and had spent another
three in Florence, two in Rome, and a day and a half in Paris.

One morning, however, my faithful watch over the letter rack, which was
already becoming a standing joke in the hotel, was rewarded. An envelope
bearing an English stamp and postmark, and addressed in a handwriting as
familiar to me as my own, stared me in the face. To take it out and
break the seal was the work of a moment. It was only a matter of a few
lines, but it brought me news that raised me to the seventh heaven of
delight.

Mr. and Miss Wetherell had arrived in London the previous afternoon,
they were staying at the _Hotel Metropole_, would leave town for the
country at the end of the week, but in the meantime, if I wished to see
her, my sweetheart would be in the entrance hall of the British Museum
the following morning at eleven o'clock.

How I conducted myself in the interval between my receipt of the letter
and the time of the appointment, I have not the least remembrance; I
know, however, that half-past ten, on the following morning, found me
pacing up and down the street before that venerable pile, scanning with
eager eyes every conveyance that approached me. The minutes dragged by
with intolerable slowness, but at length the time arrived.

A kindly church clock in the neighbourhood struck the hour, and others
all round it immediately took up the tale. Before the last stroke had
died away a hansom turned towards the gates from Bury Street, and in it,
looking the picture of health and beauty, sat the girl who, I had good
reason to know, was more than all the world to me. To attract her
attention and signal to the driver to pull up was the work of a second,
and a minute later I had helped her to alight, and we were strolling
together across the square towards the building.

"Ah, Dick," she said, with a roguish smile, "you don't know what trouble
I had to get away this morning. Papa had a dozen places he wished me to
go to with him. But when I told h