one which
Mr. Parkman had first selected was gone. It had been taken by another
customer.

Mr. George was now entirely out of patience; but he controlled himself
sufficiently to suppress all outward manifestation of it, only saying
that he believed he would not wait any longer.

"I will go down to the river," said he, "and take a boat, and when you
get a carriage you can go by land. I will wait for you at the entrance
to the tunnel."

So he went away; and as soon as he turned the corner of the street he
snapped his fingers and nodded his head with the air of a man who has
just made a very lucky escape.

"I thank my stars," said he to himself, "that I have not got such a lady
as that to take care of. Handsome as she is, I would not have her for a
travelling companion on any account whatever."

It was from having witnessed several such exhibitions of character as
this that Mr. George had expressed himself so strongly to Rollo on the
subject of joining Mr. Parkman and his wife in making the tour of
Holland.

But notwithstanding Mr. George's determination that he would not travel
in company with such a lady, it seemed to be decreed that he should do
so, for he left London about a week after this to go to Holland with
Rollo alone; and though he postponed setting out for several days, so as
to allow Mr. and Mrs. Parkman time to get well under way before them, he
happened to fall in with them several times in the course of the
journey. The first time that he met with them was in crossing the
Straits of Dover.

There are several ways by which a person may go to Holland from London.
The cheapest is to take a steamer, by which means you go down the
Thames, and thence pass directly across the German Ocean to the coast of
Holland. But that makes quite a little voyage by sea, during which
almost all persons are subject to a very disagreeable kind of sickness,
on account of the small size of the steamers, and the short tossing
motion of the sea that almost always prevails in the waters that lie
around Great Britain.

So Mr. George and Rollo, who neither of them liked to be seasick,
determined to go another way. They concluded to go down by railway to
Dover, and then to go to Calais across the strait, where the passage is
the shortest. Mr. and Mrs. Parkman had set off several days before them,
and Mr. George supposed that by this time they were far on their way
towards Holland. But they had been delayed by Mrs. Parkman's d