lived; past the white columns of Somerset House, with its courts and fountains and alleys and architecture of all ages, and its river gate where many a gilded royal barge had lain, and many a fine ambassador had arrived in state over the great highway of England; past the ancient trees in the Temple Gardens.  And then under the new Blackfriars Bridge to Southwark, dingy with its docks and breweries and huddled houses, but forever famous,—­the Southwark of Shakespeare and Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher.  And the shelf upon which they stood in the library at Carvel Hall was before my eyes.

“Yes,” said Dolly; “and I recall your mother’s name written in faded ink upon the fly-leaves.”

Ah, London Town, by what subtleties are you tied to the hearts of those born across the sea?  That is one of the mysteries of race.

Under the pointed arches of old London Bridge, with its hooded shelters for the weary, to where the massive Tower had frowned for ages upon the foolish river.  And then the forest of ships, and the officious throng of little wherries and lighters that pressed around them, seeming to say, “You clumsy giants, how helpless would you be without us!” Soon our own wherry was dodging among them, ships brought hither by the four winds of the seas; many discharging in the stream, some in the docks then beginning to be built, and hugging the huge warehouses.  Hides from frozen Russia were piled high beside barrels of sugar and rum from the moist island cane-fields of the Indies, and pipes of wine from the sunny hillsides of France, and big boxes of tea bearing the hall-mark of the mysterious East.  Dolly gazed in wonder.  And I was commanded to show her a schooner like the Black Moll, and a brigantine like the John.

“And Captain Paul told me you climbed the masts, Richard, and worked like a common seaman.  Tell me,” says she, pointing at the royal yard of a tall East Indiaman, “did you go as high as that when it was rough?”

And, hugely to the boatman’s delight, the minx must needs put her fingers on the hard welts on my hands, and vow she would be a sailor and she were a man.  But at length we came to a trim-built bark lying off Redriff Stairs, with the words “Betsy, of London,” painted across her stern.  In no time at all, Captain Paul was down the gangway ladder and at the water-side, too hand Dorothy out.

“This honour overwhelms me, Miss Manners,” he said; “but I know whom to thank for it.”  And he glanced slyly at me.

Dorothy stepped aboard with the air of Queen Elizabeth come to inspect Lord Howard’s flagship.

“Then you will thank me,” said she.  “Why, I could eat my dinner off your deck, captain!  Are all merchantmen so clean?”

John Paul smiled.

“Not all, Miss Manners,” he said.

“And you are still sailing at the ebb?” I asked.

“In an hour, Richard, if the wind holds good.”

With what pride he showed us over his ship, the sailors gaping at the fine young lady.  It had taken him just a day to institute his navy discipline.  And Dolly went about exclaiming, and asking an hundred questions, and merrily catechising me upon the run of the ropes.  All was order and readiness for dropping down the stream when he led us into his cabin, where he had a bottle of wine and some refreshments laid out against my coming.