outside what is commonly described by that name it would be
hard to find. Indeed, if it had not been for the courage and
adventurous spirit of Jane, the younger of the two, their hearts might
well have failed them during those first months in which the autumn days
shortened over the district of Bloomsbury. Since they knew no one, they
had nobody to visit, and nobody came to see them. They were still not a
little bewildered by London. There were, it was true, a great many
sights of an inanimate kind; but how to get at them? They did not
consider themselves justified in taking cabs, and omnibuses were at
first, to two people who had lived all their lives in a tramless town, a
disconcerting and complicated means of locomotion. However, as the time
went on they shook down, they found their little niche in existence;
they made acquaintance with the clergyman's wife and some of the
district visitors, and when the first summer of their London life came
round, the summer following Rachel's marriage, everything seemed to them
more possible. London was bright, sunshiny, and welcoming, instead of
being austere and repellent. Pateley had succeeded in obtaining a key of
the square close to which they lived, and they sat there and revelled in
the summer weather. The mere fact of having him so near them, of knowing
that at any moment in the day he might come in with the loud voice and
heartiness of manner which always cheered and uplifted them, albeit some
of his acquaintances ventured to find it too audible, gave them a fresh
sense of being in touch with all the great things happening in the
world. Then came a moment in which, indeed, the larger issues of life
seemed to present themselves to be dealt with. Pateley, under whose
auspices the _Arbiter_ had prospered exceedingly, and who had an
interest in it from the point of view of a commercial enterprise as well
as of a political organ, found himself one day the possessor of a larger
sum of ready money than he had expected. He made up his mind that some
of it should be given to his sisters, and that the rest should join
their own savings invested in the "Equator," which seemed to present
every prospect of succeeding when once the moment should come to work
it. Pateley was altogether in a high state of jubilation in those days.
The Cape to Cairo railway was actually on the verge of being completed.
In a week more the gigantic scheme would be an accomplished fact. The
excitement in Londo