here on the previous day.
I was sitting in an adjoining room--but the door being open I could
hear all that was said.
"How did you go?" asked Boy.
"Oh!" exclaimed the Wallypug, "in the most extraordinary way you can
possibly imagine. We went into a house in High Street, Kensington, and
bought some little tickets, and then we handed them to a man at a
barrier, who cut a little piece out of each one as we passed through."
"To rebebber us by," chimed in A. Fish, Esq.
"Yes," continued the Wallypug; "and then we went down two flights of
stairs, and by-and-bye a lot of little houses on wheels came rushing
into the station, and we got into one of them and before you could say
'Jack Robinson' we were rushing through a big black tunnel under the
ground."
"Why, you mean the Underground Railway," declared Girlie.
"Yes," agreed his Majesty. "And the little room we sat in had
beautiful soft cushions and a big light in the middle of the roof, and
little texts printed on the wall--"
"Texts!" exclaimed both of the children.
"Texts," repeated the Wallypug. "What were they? Do you remember?" he
asked of the others.
"Oh, one was, 'You are requested not to put your feet on the
cushions,'" said the Rhymester.
"Oh, yes, and 'To seat five,' and 'Wait till the train stops'--I
remember now," continued the Wallypug. "Well, we kept rushing through
the tunnel till we came to 'Holman's Mustard,' and a lot of people got
out, and then we went on again till we came to 'Smears' Soap.'"
[Illustration: "HOLMAN'S MUSTARD AGAIN"]
"It wasn't 'Smears' Soap,'" contradicted the Doctor-in-Law. "It was
somebody's Ink."
"Well, there were such a lot of names," declared the Wallypug, "it was
impossible to really tell which was which. I always took the name
opposite to my window to be the right one. The funniest part of it all
was, we kept coming to 'Holman's Mustard' over and over again. I can't
think how on earth the people know when to get out."
"Why, those weren't the names of the stations at all," laughed Boy.
"They were advertisements!"
"Well, where were the names of the stations then?" demanded his
Majesty.
"Why, in big letters on the walls of course," was the reply.
"They couldn't have been much bigger than those of 'Holman's
Mustard,'" persisted the Wallypug somewhat ungrammatically.
"Never mind about that; get on with your story," remarked the
Doctor-in-Law impatiently.
"Well, after going through a lot of tun
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