300 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



CHIEF CUSTODIAN. It IS not necessary : it is all right. 

 You needn't wait. 



HEROIC EXPLORER. I should like to have a receipt. 



But by this time the Chief Custodian's attention is 

 again devoted wholly to the Person of Importance. Feel- 

 ing that to persist in overhearing their conversation would 

 be an indelicacy, the Heroic Explorer politely leaves the 

 room, and establishes himself on a chair in a gloomy pass- 

 age outside, where he wiles away the time by rehearsing 

 in his imagination how he will tell off the Chief Custodian 

 when the Person of Importance retires. But this the 

 Person of Importance shows no sign of doing, and the 

 Explorer's thoughts and intentions become darker and 

 darker. As the day wears on, minor officials, passing to 

 and from the Presence, look at him doubtfully and ask his 

 business. The reply is always the same, " I am waiting 

 for a receipt for some penguins' eggs." At last it be- 

 comes clear from the Explorer's expression that what he is 

 really waiting for is not to take a receipt but to commit 

 murder. Presumably this is reported to the destined 

 victim : at all events the receipt finally comes ; and the 

 Explorer goes his way with it, feeling that he has behaved 

 like a perfect gentleman, but so very dissatisfied with that 

 vapid consolation that for hours he continues his imagin- 

 ary rehearsals of what he would have liked to have done to 

 that Custodian (mostly with his boots) by way of teaching 

 him manners. 



Some time after this I visited the Natural History 

 Museum with Captain Scott's sister. After a slight pre- 

 liminary skirmish in which we convinced a minor custo- 

 dian that the specimens brought by the expedition from 

 the Antarctic did not include the moths we found preying 

 on some of them, Miss Scott expressed a wish to see the 

 penguins' eggs. Thereupon the minor custodians flatly 

 denied that any such eggs were in existence or in their 

 possession. Now Miss Scott was her brother's sister ; 

 and she showed so little disposition to take this lying down 

 that I was glad to get her away with no worse consequences 

 than a profanely emphasized threat on my part that if we 



