lf seriously, as did the fair frailty behind the
high-steppers, no less than the best ladies of the land who seemed to
be doing it as a traditional duty; but each and every one looked so
serious.

How was it that no one seemed to be laughing and enjoying himself out
of all the crowd? The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne seemed to belong to
another planet. The listless languor of these girls did not at least
obviously claim Transatlantic cousinship; the gaiety of a Japanese
street seemed so remote as to belong to a planet of another system;
and the seriousness seemed reflected in the faces of the great
mediocracy sauntering along inside the railings or solemnly seated in
the chairs with their faces turned carriagewards.

Here it did not seem the Dingy City; there was colour enough--bright
splashes of colour, both colour in movement and colour from the
rhododendron bushes, backgrounded with the fresh grass, that an artist
was making a picture of over the way; it was not the Dingy City here.
At least this was an oasis in it. But here, in this oasis, playground
or pleasure-ground, the People of the Serious City was what was writ
on their faces.

Five hours later the park was almost deserted, and the gleam of white
shirt-front or tulle-foam was caught as a closed carriage passed.

The old bachelor was asleep in his chair at an open window looking
across the narrow street at the familiar sooty face of the house
opposite.

"Good-night, Tom; I do hope it will be fine for to-morrow," the
black-haired girl was saying at her door, holding in her hand the new
hat she had been trimming.

The Volunteer colonel was discussing Buller and port across the
glittering dinner-field.

The little fair-haired boy had climbed softly out of his cot, and,
going over to his mother's bed, whispered coaxingly, "Will 'oo let
me sleep with 'oo, mummy?" and when he had nestled his head on her
arm, "Now tell me the story how daddy died," and was asleep before the
familiar story was finished.

[Illustration: Boer Prisoners.]

XIX

THE CITY OF DUMB DISTANCES

I am sure there must be many to whom the idea occurs at such times of
the year as this, at the end of the season, when people are scattering
out of London, that friends are leaving whom we would like to have had
the time to have seen before they went. How often, looking over the
pages of one's address book, one says, "I wonder how it is I have not
seen So-and-so for an age," and one