s again, always as the
flower of chivalry and guardian of ladies in distress. I will never
again travel abroad without a man, even if I have to hire one from a
feeble-minded asylum. We work like galley-slaves, Aunt Celia and I,
finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand
Bradshaw, and I can't even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the
A B C Railway Guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive
before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or
down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes,
one that barely escapes idiocy, can disentangle a railway guide when the
brightest woman fails. Even the boots at the inn in Wells took my book,
and, rubbing his frightfully dirty finger down the row of puzzling
figures, found the place in a minute, and said, 'There ye are, miss.' It
is very humiliating. I suppose there are Bradshaw professorships in the
English universities, but the boots cannot have imbibed his knowledge
there. A traveller at _table d'hote_ dinner yesterday said there are
three classes of Bradshaw trains in Great Britain: those that depart and
never arrive, those that arrive but never depart, and those that can be
caught in transit, going on, like the wheel of eternity, with neither
beginning nor end. All the time I have left from the study of routes and
hotels I spend on guide-books. Now, I'm sure that if any one of the men
I know were here, he could tell me all that is necessary as we walk
along the streets. I don't say it in a frivolous or sentimental spirit
in the least, but I do affirm that there is hardly any juncture in life
where one isn't better off for having a man about. I should never dare
divulge this to Aunt Celia, for she doesn't think men very nice. She
excludes them from conversation as if they were indelicate subjects.

But to go on, we were standing at the door of Ye Crowne and Keys at
Wells, waiting for the fly which we had ordered to take us to the
station, when who should drive up in a four-wheeler but the flower of
chivalry. Aunt Celia was saying very audibly, 'We shall certainly miss
the train, if the man doesn't come at once.'

'Pray take this cab,' said the flower of chivalry. 'I am not leaving for
an hour or more.'

Aunt Celia got in without a murmur; I sneaked in after her, not daring
to lift my eyes. I don't think she looked at him, though she did
vouchsafe the remark that he seemed to be a civil sort of pe