Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/293

Rh you enough to be indifferent, no matter how you may have consoled yourself in the interval.

Elizabeth walked fast, but she did not get to the railway station, because she took the wrong turning several times. She passed through street after strange street, and came out on a wide quay; another canal; across it showed old, gabled, red-roofed houses. She walked on and came presently to a bridge, and another quay, and a little puffing, snorting steamboat.

She hurriedly collected a few scattered items of her school vocabulary—

"Est-ce que—est-ce que—ce bateau à vapeur va—va—anywhere?"

A voluble assurance that it went at twelve-thirty did not content her. She gathered her forces again.

"Oui; mais où est-ce qu'il va aller—?" The answer sounded something like "Sloosh," and the speaker pointed vaguely up the green canal.

Elizabeth went on board. This was as good as Ghent. Better. There was an element of adventure about it. "Sloosh" might be anywhere; one might not reach it for days. But