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“What’s the good,” she said, “of carrying a baby not two years old to the Tower of London, the British Museum, and the Chapel of Henry VII.? She can’t take any interest in the smothered princes, or the Assyrian remnants. If I am at home, I can look after her as well as not.”

“But you see, ma’am,” said Pomona, “we don’t expect the baby’ll ever come over here ag’in, an’ when she gits older, I’ll tell her all about these things, an’ it’ll expan’ her intelleck a lot more when she feels she’s seed ’em all without knowin’ it. To be sure, the monnyments of bygone days don’t always agree with her; for Jone set her down on the tomb of Chaucer the other day, an’ her little legs got as cold as the tomb itself, an’ I told him that there was too big a difference between a tomb nigh four hundred years old an’ a small baby which don’t date back two years, for them to be sot together that way; an’ he promised to be more careful after that. He gouged a little piece out of Chaucer’s tomb, an’ as we went home we bought a copy of the old gentleman’s poems, so as we could see what reason there was for keepin’ him so long, an’ at night I read Jone two of the Canterbury Tales. ‘You wouldn’t ‘a’ thought,’ says Jone, ‘jus’ by lookin’ at that little piece of plaster, that the old fellow could ‘a’ got up such stories as them.'”

“What I want to see more’n anything else,” said Pomona to us one day, “is a real lord, or some kind of nobleman of high degree. I’ve allers loved to read about ’em in books, and I’d rather see one close to, than all the tombs and crypts and lofty domes you could rake together; an’ I don’t want to see ’em neither in the streets, nor yet in a House of Parliament, which aint in session; for there, I don’t believe, dressin’ in common clothes as they do, that I could tell ’em from other people. What I want is to penetrate into the home of one of ’em, and see him as he really is. It’s only there that his noble blood’ll come out.”

“Pomona,” cried Euphemia, in accents of alarm, “don’t you try penetrating into any nobleman’s home. You will get yourself into trouble, and the rest of us, too.”

“Oh, I’m not a-goin’ to git you into any trouble, ma’am,” said Pomona; “you needn’t be afeard of that.” And she went about her household duties.

A few days after this, as Euphemia and I were going to the Tower of London in a Hansom cab–and it was one of Euphemia’s greatest delights to be bowled over the smooth London pavements in one of these vehicles, with the driver out of sight, and the horse in front of us just as if we were driving ourselves, only without any of the trouble, and on every corner one of the names of the streets we had read about in Dickens and Thackeray, and with the Sampson Brasses, and the Pecksniffs, and the Mrs. Gamps, and the Guppys, and the Sir Leicester Dedlocks, and the Becky Sharps, and the Pendennises, all walking about just as natural as in the novels–we were surprised to see Pomona hurrying along the sidewalk alone. The moment our eyes fell upon her a feeling of alarm arose within us. Where was she going with such an intent purpose in her face, and without Jonas? She was walking westward, and we were going to the east. At Euphemia’s request I stopped the cab, jumped out, and ran after her, but she had disappeared in the crowd.

“She is up to mischief,” said Euphemia.

But it was of no use to worry our minds on the subject, and we soon forgot, in the ancient wonders of the Tower, the probable eccentricities of our modern handmaid.