They were travelling with one of Mr. Thomas Gunn’s parties—­fourteen days in Rome for fourteen pounds.  They did not belong to the personally conducted party, of course—­Miss Winchelsea had seen to that—­but they travelled with it because of the convenience of that arrangement.  The people were the oddest mixture, and wonderfully amusing.  There was a vociferous red-faced polyglot personal conductor in a pepper-and-salt suit, very long in the arms and legs and very active.  He shouted proclamations.  When he wanted to speak to people he stretched out an arm and held them until his purpose was accomplished.  One hand was full of papers, tickets, counterfoils of tourists.  The people of the personally conducted party were, it seemed, of two sorts; people the conductor wanted and could not find, and people he did not want and who followed him in a steadily growing tail up and down the platform.  These people seemed, indeed, to think that their one chance of reaching Rome lay in keeping close to him.  Three little old ladies were particularly energetic in his pursuit, and at last maddened him to the pitch of clapping them into a carriage and daring them to emerge again.  For the rest of the time, one, two, or three of their heads protruded from the window wailing inquiries about “a little wicker-work box” whenever he drew near.  There was a very stout man with a very stout wife in shiny black; there was a little old man like an aged hostler.

“What can such people want in Rome?” asked Miss Winchelsea.  “What can it mean to them?” There was a very tall curate in a very small straw hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camera stand.  The contrast amused Fanny very much.  Once they heard some one calling for “Snooks.”  “I always thought that name was invented by novelists,” said Miss Winchelsea.  “Fancy!  Snooks.  I wonder which is Mr. Snooks.”  Finally they picked out a very stout and resolute little man in a large check suit.  “If he isn’t Snooks, he ought to be,” said Miss Winchelsea.

Presently the conductor discovered Helen’s attempt at a corner in carriages.  “Room for five,” he bawled with a parallel translation on his fingers.  A party of four together—­mother, father, and two daughters—­ blundered in, all greatly excited.  “It’s all right, Ma—­you let me,” said one of the daughters, hitting her mother’s bonnet with a handbag she struggled to put in the rack.  Miss Winchelsea detested people who banged about and called their mother “Ma.”  A young man travelling alone followed.  He was not at all “touristy” in his costume, Miss Winchelsea observed; his Gladstone bag was of good pleasant leather with labels reminiscent of Luxembourg and Ostend, and his boots, though brown, were not vulgar.  He carried an overcoat on his arm.  Before these people had properly settled in their places, came an inspection of tickets and a slamming of doors, and behold! they were gliding out of Charing Cross Station on their way to Rome.