present it with a free library, a breakwater, a clocktower, a motor fire-engine, or anything of that kind that constituted its most pressing want, provided that the thing could be done anonymously and without any fuss.
At least that had been my intention when I took a ticket at Waterloo. But as the train began to find its way round the undulating Surrey commons, to cross deep shady lanes, and to explore pine woods that had seemed in the distance to be designed for the Noah's Ark of some giant's nursery, it suddenly came upon me that here was the England which I had come nine thousand miles to see. London, where I had been waited on by a Swiss, valeted by a Frenchman, served at the bank by a German, and sung to on the patriotic subject of Motherland by an Italian, had not, to be frank, struck me as being quite homelike. Nymph Aurelia, for all I knew, might be equally disappointing; but I felt strangely drawn to the quiet sunlit country through which I was being carried.
According to the time-table the first stop was yet fifty miles away, but the charm and friendliness of the woodland grew irresistible. A notice in the carriage informed me, as I hastily assumed, that I could stop the train in return for the payment of a fine of five pounds. I understood that it was a business offer, but this I have since learned was not so. However, that is by the way. I pulled the cord, took down my light portmanteau from the rack, got five sovereigns in readiness and waited.
Had the train stopped where I wished and where I think it ought to have done, I should have stepped directly from the line into the depths of a fern-carpeted dell. As a matter of fact, however, it drew up along the more commonplace platform of a country station. An official of some kind came forward as I alighted. As I wished him a cheerful good-afternoon and dropped the
