being awakened out of your sleep to be told that you were Queen of England! Victoria was told she must not keep the lords waiting, and so she threw a shawl round her nightdress and slipped her feet into slippers, and went through into another large room with all her long hair hanging down; and when they saw her those two great lords fell on their knees and kissed her hand. She was only eighteen then, and she had before her such a wonderful life. It is said that she had known for a little time before this that if anything happened to her uncle she would be Queen. So she was not quite unprepared, and when she had been warned of this, her first exclamation was; 'Oh, I will be good!' Which showed she was good, for I think most people would have been rather proud about it, and would not have thought just at that moment of being good.

Kensington Gardens is one end of a great park, and the other end is called Hyde Park, where the fashionable people drive in the afternoons. There are now many who prefer to drive in motor-cars, but there are a few who still use open carriages, with the fine horses tossing their heads proudly as they trot. It is a great pity to see that so many people will put the rein, called a bearing-rein, upon their horses. This forces the poor animal's head up high, and holds it there, until his neck aches; and he tries to get rid of it, and foams and chews his bit, and then the ladies and men who are driving think he looks splendid, and never mind that he is suffering pain. But to anyone who really loves a horse there is nothing beautiful in this, and the horse looks far more beautiful when he is free and holds his head high, or tosses it just because he likes to do so.

The flowers in Hyde Park are often lovely, and in summer when they are out, and form a background for the shining cars in which people wait for the Queen to pass, there is no grander sight to be seen anywhere. On Sundays, when it is fine, a great many fashionable people go to walk up and down in the Park after they have been to church, and then there are many smart dresses to be seen.

There is a great piece of water here called the Serpentine, because it curves round like a serpent, and anyone can hire a boat and go for a row, and sometimes the whole of the water is covered with boats. At other times in the winter, when the ice is safe, there are hundreds and hundreds of skaters to be seen. And in the mornings very early a good many men and boys go here to bathe, so that the poor old Serpentine gets well used; but perhaps he likes it, and it keeps him from feeling lonely.

During the Great War the open spaces of the Park were freely used for the drill and training of soldiers, and many people used to go to watch the fresh-faced young lads springing out of the trenches they had dug and prodding with their bayonets at stuffed swinging sacks representing the enemy. There is always something going on and something to see in Hyde Park.

CHAPTER IV

TRAINS AND HORSES

London is so large that it takes a long time to get from one end to the other, and the men who go down to the City for their work and come back every day want means of getting about cheaply and quickly. So there are omnibuses and trains and cabs in numbers. But the trains in London do not run above ground—there would be no room for them in the crowded streets; so there are railways in the earth, deep down beneath all the houses, and on them there are trains that run round in a circle. Those of you who have frequently been by the Underground Railway think nothing of it; to you it seems quite natural, for you are used to it. But it really is a most astonishing piece of work, as you would realize if you saw it for the first time. Just imagine how long it must have taken to cut out and carry away all the masses of earth that had to be removed to make a tunnel of such a length—a tunnel which should run right round underneath London. The most wonderful thing is that the houses under which it ran did not fall down and break through into it. But that has never happened, for the men who built the tunnel made it very strong, and lined it with bricks. And all day long, while people are walking about in the streets and horses are trotting in the daylight, down below the trains in the underground are running, running in the dark. It cannot be a very pleasant life to be an engine-driver on this railway: it must be almost like the life of a pitman who works down in the depths of the earth; yet the men themselves seem quite happy. The worst part of the railway used to be that as there are not many places where the smoke and steam can get out into the air, they hung in the tunnels and made the air very thick and bad, and there was, consequently, nearly always a sort of fog down there, and it was unpleasant to breathe the thick air; but all this has been remedied now, for the trains are run by electricity instead of steam. There are other underground railways in London also run by electricity, and they go through different districts, so by means of one or the other people can get near to almost any street where they want to go to visit their friends or to shop. In these, the fares are on the same system as on other railways: you pay for your ticket according to the distance you wish to go; but in the first one you paid twopence for all distances alike—twopence if you wanted to go right from the West End to the City, and twopence all the same if you were going to get out at the next station. Therefore some people nicknamed this railway 'The Twopenny Tube.'

Now, besides these underground trains, which are not seen, there are many huge motor-omnibuses to convey people about the streets above ground. These omnibuses are painted in very bright colours—generally red—and the newest of all are made very conveniently so that the passengers inside can mostly sit facing the way they are going, as they do outside. You can go inside or out, and in summer it is a very good way of seeing London to go on the top of an omnibus and watch all that goes on in the streets below; in the old days the horse omnibuses were often stuffy inside, with no windows to open at all, and it is a wonder anyone could be found to go in them. When the motor-omnibuses are full they carry a great many people. Those of the latest pattern carry fifty-four passengers inside and out. There is now a regulation to make omnibuses stop only at certain fixed places which are shown by sign-boards with the numbers of the 'buses on them. This saves the constant stopping and starting again, which is trying for the driver, and wastes much time. People are often very inconsiderate about this; they never think of getting off if the omnibus stops just a little way before the place they are going to. I have seen a woman—I'm afraid women are the worst in this respect—wave her umbrella to the conductor of an omnibus that was going at a good pace, so the omnibus stopped, and the woman took quite a long time to go across the street to it; and when she reached it she asked if it were going to the place she wanted, and it was not, so all the stopping and waiting had been for nothing. The motor 'buses go very much faster than the old horse 'buses, and as they carry, also, many more people, altogether, as we have seen, they do more work in the way of conveyance altogether.

You can go a long way in an omnibus for a few pence, but taxi-cabs are much more expensive; they are also very comfortable—no stopping and waiting for other people then. You are carried swiftly and smoothly to your destination, unless you are held up by the traffic; and you always know just how much