for six months in the year. I often
think it would be grand to spend a summer day in the middle of one of
the bridges--Westminster or London Bridge--and watch the boats on the
river and the tide of people coming and going, and see the clouds and
the sunshine change the colour of the stream and the outlines of the
great buildings, and then to go back just at dark and see the same scene
by moonlight, with everything transformed and solemn, and listen to the
rush of the tide and watch the lights twinkling on wharves and on board
boats and barges, and the moon on the great lovely buildings of
Westminster, and the dome of St. Paul's in the distance: that is what I
should like to do."

"I used to think very much as you do, Annie, when I was last in London,"
said Miss Grantley; "but then I had very little opportunity of going to
theatres or other amusements, for I had no one to take me except in a
family party, and had to make the most of the pleasure that is to be
found in the wonderful aspects of the great city itself. Of course it is
only possible for a poor unprotected creature to see a part of the
greatest capital in the world; and so when I went to explore the bridges
or any other neighbourhood after dusk I took an escort, and one who knew
London so well that he was able to say where I ought and where I ought
not to go."

"A policeman, was it, Miss Grantley?" said Kate Bell.

"Oh, dear! no. Policemen have no time to go out as escorts to young or
middle-aged ladies," said our governess laughing. "My cavalier was a boy
who worked at a printing-office. His mother was a very respectable woman
who lived in a tidy house in a very quiet street where she let two
furnished rooms, and I was her tenant while I was studying to pass two
examinations. I had been staying with old friends of my dear father,
for they did not desert me altogether though I was only a governess;
indeed, they gave me too large a share of the amusements and
sight-seeing which take up so much time, so that I was obliged to bid
them good-bye for a good while, and restrict my visits to Sundays or one
evening a week. I think my landlady, who was a widow, had been their
cook; but at all events she was a good motherly woman, and her boy of
fourteen was always ready for an excursion when he came home from work.

"At first I was obliged to repress his sense of being a sort of
champion; and once when a bigger and very dirty boy, who had a dog in a
string, splashed