nd Plantagenet is helping me." Plantagenet winced a little
under this, as the hero of old must have winced when he was found
with the distaff. Mr Palliser had relinquished his sword of state
for the distaff which he had assumed, and could take no glory in the
change. There was, too, in his wife's voice the slightest hint of
mockery, which, slight as it was, he perhaps thought she might have
spared. "You have nothing left to pack," continued Glencora, "and I
don't know what you can do to amuse yourself."

"I will help you," said Alice.

"But we have so very nearly done. I think we shall have to pull all
the things out, and put them up again, or we shall never get through
to-morrow. We couldn't start to-morrow;--could we, Plantagenet?"

"Not very well, as your rooms are ordered in Paris for the next day."

"As if we couldn't find rooms at every inn on the road. Men are
so particular. Now in travelling I should like never to order
rooms,--never to know where I was going or when I was going, and to
carry everything I wanted in a market-basket." Alice, who by this
time had followed her friend along the passage to her bedroom, and
had seen how widely the packages were spread about, bethought herself
that the market-basket should be a large one. "And I would never
travel among Christians. Christians are so slow, and they wear
chimney-pot hats everywhere. The further one goes from London among
Christians, the more they wear chimney-pot hats. I want Plantagenet
to take us to see the Kurds, but he won't."

"I don't think that would be fair to Miss Vavasor," said Mr Palliser,
who had followed them.

"Don't put the blame on her head," said Lady Glencora. "Women have
always pluck for anything. Wouldn't you like to see a live Kurd,
Alice?"

"I don't exactly know where they live," said Alice.

"Nor I. I have not the remotest idea of the way to the Kurds. You see
my joke, don't you, though Plantagenet doesn't? But one knows that
they are Eastern, and the East is such a grand idea!"

"I think we'll content ourselves with Rome, or perhaps Naples, on
this occasion," said Mr Palliser.

The notion of Lady Glencora packing anything for herself was as good
a joke as that other one of the Kurds and whey. But she went flitting
about from room to room, declaring that this thing must be taken,
and that other, till the market-basket would have become very large
indeed. Alice was astonished at the extent of the preparations, and
the so