Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/243

 "Why do you stop?" asked Tom. "If you are personifying a commissionnaire, you must never cease talking from the time you come in until we fee you."

"I really cannot think of anything more to tell you."

Alice now took her turn. "The church is built in memory of an idiot, or two idiots."

"True; I had forgotten that."

We made our way from one chapel to another, through low, narrow passages, the ceilings of which we could touch with our hands.

"Don't let us stay here," pleaded Grace. "If you only knew how cold I am!"

We could all sympathize with her, and we came out gladly into the damp air.

"Now for a look at the Kremlin," cried Tom, "and then home to get warm."

We entered the gate nearest us, and walked about among the various buildings which constitute the Kremlin. Churches, the palace, an arsenal and treasure-house, the whole surrounded by a high, white wall, and placed on an eminence in the centre of the city,—this is the Kremlin of which I have dreamed.

Looking at it, as I did for the first time, under a dull March sky, sharp little snow-flakes pelting me fiercely in the face, melting snow under foot, and a general nastiness and sloppiness about me, I was moved to a sort of wonder that any one could ever have admired this strange architecture.

"I never saw anything so disappointing as that great bell" (standing at a distance, and surveying it with