“Well,” said I, “it is not easy to put it to you exactly, but it’s a sort of a cross between a prosperous farmer without children and a poor country gentleman with two sons at college and one in the British army, and no money to pay their debts with.”

“That last is not to my liking,” said Jone.

“But the farmer part of the cross would make it all right,” I said to him, “and it strikes me that a mixture like that would just suit us while we are staying over here.  Now, if you will try to think of yourself as part rich farmer and part poor gentleman, I’ll consider myself the wife of the combination, and I am sure we will get along better.  We didn’t come over here to be looked upon as if we was the bottom of a pie dish and charged as if we was the upper crust.  I’m in favor of paying a little more money and getting a lot more respectfulness, and the way to begin is to give up these lodgings and go to a hotel such as the upper middlers stop at.  From what I’ve heard, the Babylon Hotel is the one for us while we are in London.  Nobody will suspect that any of the people at that hotel are retired servants.”

[Illustration:  “Boy, go order me a four-in-hand”]

This hit Jone hard, as I knew it would, and he jumped up, made three steps across the room, and rang the bell so that the people across the street must have heard it, and up came the boy in green jacket and buttons, with about every other button missing, and I never knew him to come up so quick before.

“Boy,” said Jone to him, as if he was hollering to a stubborn ox, “go order me a four-in-hand.”

But this letter is so long I must stop for the present.

Letter Number Two

LONDON

When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did not correct him, for I wouldn’t do that before servants without giving him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say another word the boy was gone.

“Mercy on us,” I said, “what a stupid blunder!  You meant four-wheeler.”

[Illustration:  The Landlady with an “underdone visage”]

“Of course I did,” he said; “I was a little mad and got things mixed, but I expect the fellow understood what I meant.”

“You ought to have called a hansom any way,” I said, “for they are a lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler.”

“If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one,” said he.  “I don’t want anybody to have more wheels than we have.”

At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer on her underdone visage, and, says she, “I suppose you don’t understand about the vehicles we have in London.  The four-in-hand is what the quality and coach people use when—­” As I looked at Jone I saw his legs tremble, and I know what that means.  If I was a wanderin’ dog and saw Jone’s legs tremble, the only thoughts