ith
the elastic step of a maid; and as she went she chatted, asking a
score of shrewd questions about Westminster--the masters, the food,
the old dormitory in which Charles slept, the new one then rising to
replace it; breaking off to recognise some famous building, or to
pause and gaze after a company of his Majesty's guards. Her own
masterful carriage and unembarrassed mode of speech--"as if all
London belonged to her," Charles afterwards described it--drew the
stares of the passers-by; stares which she misinterpreted, for in the
gut of the Strand, a few paces beyond Somerset House, she suddenly
twirled the lad about and "Bless us, child, your eye's enough to
frighten the town! 'Tis to be hoped brother Sam has not turned
Quaker in India; or that Sally the cook-maid has a beefsteak handy."

Mr. Matthew Wesley, apothecary and by courtesy "surgeon," to whose
house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, they presently swerved aside,
had not returned from his morning's round of visits. He was a
widower and took his meals irregularly. But Sally had two covers
laid, with a pot of freshly drawn porter beside each; and here, after
Charles's eye had been attended to and the swelling reduced, they ate
and drank and rested for half an hour before resuming their walk.

So far, and until they reached the Tower, their road was familiar
enough; but from Smithfield onwards they had to halt and inquire
their way again and again in intervals of threading the traffic which
poured out of cross-streets and to and from the docks on their
right--wagons empty, wagons laden with hides, jute, scrap-iron,
tallow, indigo, woollen bales, ochre, sugar; trollies and
pack-horses; here and there a cordon of porters and warehousemen
trundling barrels as nonchalantly as a child his hoop. The business
of piloting his mother through these cross-tides left Charles little
time for observation; but one incident of that walk he never forgot.

They were passing Shadwell when they came on a knot of people and two
watchmen posted at the corner of a street across which a reek of
smoke mingled with clouds of gritty dust. Twice or thrice they heard
a crash or dull rumble of falling masonry. A distillery had been
blazing there all night and a gang of workmen was now clearing the
ruins. But as Charles and his mother came by the corner, the knot of
people parted and gave passage to a line of stretchers--six
stretchers in all, and on each a body, which the bearer