doing all my life,
particularly for the year before, and it almost seemed as if I couldn't
be the man who had been going into the City every day in the morning and
coming back from it every evening after writing a lot of uninteresting
letters. It was like being pitched all of a sudden from one world into
another. Well, I found my way back somehow or other, and as I went along
I made up my mind how I'd spend my holiday. I said to myself, "I'll have
a walking tour as well as Ferrars, only mine is to be a tour of London
and its environs," and I had got it all settled when I let myself into
the house about four o'clock in the morning, and the sun was shining,
and the street almost as still as the wood at midnight!'

'I think that was a capital idea of yours. Did you have your tour? Did
you buy a map of London?'

'I had the tour all right. I didn't buy a map; that would have spoilt
it, somehow; to see everything plotted out, and named, and measured.
What I wanted was to feel that I was going where nobody had been before.
That's nonsense, isn't it? as if there could be any such places in
London, or England either, for the matter of that.'

'I know what you mean; you wanted to feel as if you were going on a sort
of voyage of discovery. Isn't that it?'

'Exactly, that's what I was trying to tell you. Besides, I didn't want
to buy a map. I made a map.'

'How do you mean? Did you make a map out of your head?'

'I'll tell you about it afterwards. But do you really want to hear about
my grand tour?'

'Of course I do; it must have been delightful. I call it a most original
idea.'

'Well, I was quite full of it, and what you said just now about a voyage
of discovery reminds me of how I felt then. When I was a boy I was
awfully fond of reading of great travellers--I suppose all boys are--and
of sailors who were driven out of their course and found themselves in
latitudes where no ship had ever sailed before, and of people who
discovered wonderful cities in strange countries; and all the second day
of my holidays I was feeling just as I used to when I read these books.
I didn't get up till pretty late. I was tired to death after all those
miles I had walked; but when I had finished my breakfast and filled my
pipe, I had a grand time of it. It was such nonsense, you know; as if
there could be anything strange or wonderful in London.'

'Why shouldn't there be?'

'Well, I don't know; but I have thought afterwards what a silly