y,
it's dinner time."

CHAPTER X.

How they left the good yacht _Streak_, and how they bade a hearty
farewell to that old sea lion Captain Sturleson, and how they went
through the hundred and one formalities of the custom-house, and the
thousand and one informalities of its officials, are matters of interest
indeed, but not of history. There are moments in a man's existence when
the act of conveying half a dozen sovereigns to the pocket of that stern
monitor of good faith, the brass-buttoned custom-house officer with the
tender conscience, is of more importance to salvation than women's love
or the Thirty-nine Articles. All this they did. Nor were they spared by
the great tormentor of the West, who bristleth with the fretful quill,
whose ears surround us in the night-time, and whose voice is as the
voice of the charmer, the reporter of the just and the unjust, but
principally of the latter. And Mr. Barker made an appointment with the
Duke, and took a tender farewell of the three ladies, and promised to
call on Claudius in the afternoon, and departed. But the rest of the
party went to a famous old hotel much affected by Englishmen, and whose
chief recommendation in their eyes is that there is no elevator, so that
they can run upstairs and get out of breath, and fancy themselves at
home. Of course their apartments had been secured, and had been waiting
for them a week, and the Countess was glad to withdraw for the day into
the sunny suite over the corner that was hers. As for Miss Skeat, she
went to the window and stayed there, for America was quite different
from what she had fancied. Claudius descended to the lower regions, and
had his hair cut; and the cook and the bar-keeper and the head "boots,"
or porter, as he called himself, all came and looked in at the door of
the barber's shop, and stared at the huge Swede. And the barber walked
reverently round him with scissors and comb, and they all agreed that
Claudius must be Mr. Barnum's new attraction, except the head porter--no
relation of an English head porter--who thought it was "Fingal's babby,
or maybe the blessed Sint Pathrick himself." And the little boy who
brushed the frequenters of the barber's shop could not reach to
Claudius's coat collar, so that the barber had to set a chair for him,
and so he climbed up.

The Duke retired also to the depths of his apartments, and his servant
arrayed him in the purple and stove-pipe of the higher civilisation. A