"Now," I inquired briskly, "how are we going to find this place?"
"No. I have a sort of vague notion that it is on an island in the middle of the river, called the Isle of Dogs, or Barking Reach, or something like that. However, I have no doubt--"
"Hadn't we better ask some one?" suggested Stella.
"If there is one thing I dislike," I said, "it is accosting total strangers and badgering them for information they don't possess--not that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time!"
"Now I suggest--" My hand went to my pocket.
"No, darling," interposed my wife, hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to maps and railroad time-tables. They would rather consult a half-witted errand boy or a deaf railroad porter. "Do not let us make a spectacle of ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully."
Yes; I admit it was criminal folly. A man who asks a London street boy to be so kind as to direct him to a Home for Lost Dogs has only himself to thank for the consequence.
The wistful little boy smiled up at us. He had a pinched face and large eyes.
"Lost Dogs' 'Ome, sir?" he said courteously. "It's a good long way. Do you want to get there quick?"
"Then if I was you, sir," replied the infant, edging to the mouth of an alleyway, "I should bite a policeman!" And, with an ear-splitting yell, he vanished.
"We simply asked for it," I rejoined. "What are we going to do next?"
My question was answered in a most incredible fashion, for at this moment a man emerged from a shop on our right and set off down the street before us. He wore a species of uniform; and emblazoned on the front of his hat was the information that he was an official of the Battersea Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.
"Wait a minute and I will ask him," I said, starting forward.
"Certainly not," she replied. "If we ask him he will simply offer to show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him--about hydrophobia, and lethal chambers, and distemper--and it may be for miles. I simply couldn't bear it! We shall have to tip him, too. Let us follow him quietly."