ccupier.

"A good many people like this service," said Jay; "it is considered very
convenient. How is your search going?"

"It hasn't begun yet," said Mr. Russell. "We haven't got within three
hundred miles of the House we're looking for."

"You know more or less where it is, then?" asked Jay, who sometimes
wanted to know this herself.

"I do know, but I don't know how I know, nor what I know."

"How funny that you--an Older and Wiser Man--should feel that sort of
knowledge," said Jay. As an afterthought she called him Sir.

The 'bus grew fuller, and only Jay's bell punctured the silence that
followed. A lady asked Jay to "set her down at Charing Cross Post
Office." "The 'bus stops there automatically, Madam," said Jay, and the
lady told her not to be impertinent.

Jay seemed a little subdued after this, and it was only after she had
stood for a minute or two on her platform in silence that she said to Mr.
Russell, "London seems dead to-day, doesn't it? Not even fog, only a
lifeless light. What's the use of daylight in London to-day? You know, I
don't live in London."

"No," said Mr. Russell, "where do you live?"

"London," replied Jay. "I mean my heart doesn't live in London mostly. I
think it lives very far away in the same sort of place as the place you
know without knowing how you know it. The happy shore of God Knows Where
must have a great population of hearts. To-day I hate London so that I
could tear it into pieces like a rag."

"You ought to start your 'bus on the search for the happy shore," said
Mr. Russell. "You'd find the track of my tyres before you. I b'lieve
you'd find the place."

"Well, that would be the only perfect Service," said Jay. "But I don't
believe the public would use the route much. I would go on and on, and
leave all old ruts behind. I would stop for no fares, even the sea should
not stop me. I would go on to the horizon to see if that secret look just
after sunset really means that the stars are just over the brink. Why do
people end themselves on a note of despair? I would choose that way of
perpetuating my Perfect Day. The police would see the top seats of the
'bus sticking out at low tide, and the verdict would be, 'Suicide while
of even more than usually unsound mind.'"

A 'bus has an unromantic voice. The bass is a snarl, and the treble is
made up of a shrill rattle. It was curious how this 'bus managed to
retain withal its fantastic atmosphere.

Mr. Russell asked pres