“Hi, young man!” said Pridmore to the omnibus driver, “you’ve brought us to the wrong place. This isn’t Streatham Common, this isn’t.”
The driver was the most beautiful omnibus driver you ever saw, and his clothes were like him in beauty. He had white silk stockings and a ruffled silk shirt of white, and his coat and breeches were green and gold. So was the three-cornered hat which he lifted very politely when Pridmore spoke to him.
[Illustration: HE WAVED AWAY THE EIGHTPENCE.]
“I fear,” he said kindly, “that you must have taken, by some unfortunate misunderstanding, the wrong omnibus.”
“The omnibus does not go back. It runs from Brixton here once a month, but it doesn’t go back.”
“But how does it get to Brixton again, to start again, I mean,” asked Matilda.
“We start a new one every time,” said the driver, raising his three-cornered hat once more.
“And what becomes of the old ones?” Matilda asked.
“Ah,” said the driver, smiling, “that depends. One never knows beforehand, things change so nowadays. Good morning. Thank you so much for your patronage. No, on no account, Madam.”
He waved away the eightpence which Pridmore was trying to offer him for the fare from Brixton, and drove quickly off.
When they looked round them, no, this was certainly not Streatham Common. The wrong omnibus had brought them to a strange village—the neatest, sweetest, reddest, greenest, cleanest, prettiest village in the world. The houses were grouped round a village green, on which children in pretty loose frocks or smocks were playing happily.
Not a tight armhole was to be seen, or even imagined in that happy spot. Matilda swelled herself out and burst three hooks and a bit more of the shoulder seam.
The shops seemed a little queer, Matilda thought. The names somehow did not match the things that were to be sold. For instance, where it said “Elias Groves, Tinsmith,” there were loaves and buns in the window, and the shop that had “Baker” over the door, was full of perambulators—the grocer and the wheelwright seemed to have changed names, or shops, or something—and Miss Skimpling, Dressmaker or Milliner, had her shop window full of pork and sausage meat.
“What a funny, nice place,” said Matilda. “I am glad we took the wrong omnibus.”
