Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/224

 out of their sails. A sadder and wiser Jimmy and Aunt Mary meekly allowed themselves to be driven on through the cold moonlight, with distant gleams of towered towns, to Narbonne, where I am writing to you, after having dined and cleaned the car. Our hotel is not an ideal one; yet on my hard pillow my head, I ween, will lie easier than on a downy one last night. We arrived late, and will leave early, to lessen the chances of being pounced upon by the clutches of the law. But I begin to hope that, after all, those peasants decided to let well alone, and that we shall escape scatheless.

When I was a little boy we used to have honey in red-brown earthenware pots labelled "Finest Narbonne Honey," and for years the place figured in my imagination as a smiling region of brilliant flowers. But the disillusioning reality is a dusty, rather noisy, very commercial town, paved with stones the most abominable; and between Carcassonne and here the roads grow more abominable with every kilometre. I am tired, but not unhappy; and so, good night.

Your fraudulent friend,