y from two doors down, who sometimes came in to help, all began to
bob and smile, and Father said: "Now, my dear. Now, my dear," and Hamlet
wound himself and his lead round everything that he could see, and Helen
fussed and said: "Now, Jeremy," and Miss Jones said: "Now, children,"
and last of all Collins said: "Now, mum; now, sir," and then they all
were bundled into the bus, with the cart and the luggage coming along
behind.

The drive through the streets was, of course, as lovely as it could be;
not in the least because anyone could see anything--that was hindered by
the fact that the windows of the bus were so old that they were crusted
with a kind of glassy mildew, and no amount of rubbing on the
window-panes provided one with a view--but because the inside of the bus
was inevitably connected with adventure--partly through its motion,
partly through its noise, and partly through its lovely smell. These
were, of course, Jeremy's views, and it can't definitely be asserted
that all grown-up people shared them. But whenever Jeremy had ridden in
that bus he had always been on his way to something delightful. The
motion, therefore, rejoiced his heart, although the violence of it was
such that everyone was thrown against everyone else, so that Uncle
Samuel was suddenly hurled against the bonnet of Miss Jones, and Helen
struck Aunt Amy in the chest, and Jeremy himself dived into his sister
Barbara. As to the smell, it was that lovely well-known one that has in
it mice and straw, wet umbrellas and whisky, goloshes and candle-grease,
dust and green paint! Jeremy loved it, and sniffed on this occasion so
often that Miss Jones told him to blow his nose. As to the noise, who is
there who does not remember that rattle and clatter, that sudden,
deafening report as of the firing of a hundred firearms, the sudden
pause when every bolt and bar and hinge sighs and moans like the wind or
a stormy sea, and then that sudden scream of the clattering windows,
when it is as though a frenzied cook, having received notice to leave,
was breaking every scrap of china in the kitchen? Who does not know
that last maddened roar as the vehicle stumbles across the last piece of
cobbled road--a roar that drowns, with a savage and determined triumph,
all those last directions not to forget this, that, and the other; all
those inquiries as to whether this, that, and the other had been
remembered? Cobbles are gone now, and old buses sleep in deserted
co