She had made no acknowledgment, and yet she had made more than an acknowledgment. The self-betrayal was instantaneous, but it was complete. Then it _was_ his father of whom Montressor would not speak. Poor May! What had happened that he should be called Poor May!
Susie knew her way about, and where to go and what to see. She was not disturbed by the noise and clangour of what she called ‘The Underground,’ a mode of conveyance which at first bewildered the country boy, to whom the clash of train after train, the noise, the complication, the crowds pouring this way and that took away all understanding, and who felt himself a child in the hands of his sister, who knew exactly when the right train which she wanted was coming, and all about it, and steered him in her deft London way through the tumult.
‘How can you tell which is which?’ John cried, feeling the dust in his throat, the din in his ears, and his eyes growing red and hot with the flutter of the crowd, and of all the sights that flashed past him, and the smoke and suffocating atmosphere.
“Oh, I can’t tell. I only know,” said Susie.
She was at her ease in the midst of the commotion, looking as calm and as modest and composed as if she were walking in country lanes, not afraid of the thronged stations of the Metropolitan, the dingy platforms, the confusion of porters shouting, and doors clanging. John had meant to take care of his sister, but it was he who clung to her in the midst of the bewilderment and the noise. She knew which train to take, she knew when to change into another, where to stop; though to him they bore no distinction, neither the stations, the names of which he could never discover, nor the directions--for as yet, John was not even aware which was north or south, east or west.
Under Susie’s guidance, however, he saw and learnt a great deal in that first wonderful day. She took him from the Tower, to St. Paul’s, and then to the Abbey, to the Houses of Parliament--to the parks--as she was used to do with strangers, with convalescent patients sometimes, but that more gently--and with their relations and friends who would come up from the country to see somebody in the hospital, and then contemplate longingly the unknown world around them, till Susie, always kind, took pity on their ignorance. By this means she had been trained in the duties of cicerone, and was extremely efficient, knowing just enough and not too much: which is best--for a guide too erudite is a confusion to the simple mind.