we were so heartily tired of the lagging train and its noisy, draughty, American omnibus compartments, (there were no “bird-cages” on this line!) that we simply felt irritated at the lack of originality in the person who had given these places such names.
But the appointed three hours came to an end with the forty-fourth mile from Springfield. We were in the City of the Plains at last.
Twelve hours’ hard travelling had made both Mrs Greendays and me feel only fit for bed, but we had only three days to spare for Christchurch and the wonderful Exhibition, and so we added toilet vinegar and ammonia liberally to our nearly boiling baths, were very late for dinner, and then, almost energetic again through the stimulus afforded by the combined delights of our budgets of home letters and the comforts of an up-to-date hotel, set off immediately afterwards for the huge building on the banks of the Avon.
The brilliancy of the electric lamps that outlined the central dome and twin towers seemed to light up the whole town,—and what an extraordinary sight it showed us. Saturday night, and all the shops open and gaily lit up as if it had been Christmas Eve at about five o’clock in Regent Street! Every soul in the city must, surely, have been abroad; the streets were packed with people, Cathedral Square looked as if a mass meeting was about to be held, and the electric cars had to travel with great caution, their warning bells going incessantly. There were old people as well as young ones, but simply swarms of children and perambulators, and everyone walked leisurely, not at all as if they were on business bent; quite evidently this was a Saturday night outing for pleasure and the Exhibition was by no means the sole attraction that had wooed them from their homes.
We got on to a car already crowded after waiting for some time in the hope of catching one that was less full, and in about five minutes had arrived at the gates of the Exhibition and were crossing one of the bridges over the river. Inside, it was like a swarming bee-hive, but the building is so huge that a vast number can be in it without being uncomfortably crowded.
We had scarcely entered when we met some of our fellow-passengers on the “Ruapehu,” people who belonged to Christchurch. They were very much surprised to hear that we had come via the West Coast, instead of by sea direct to the port, Lyttelton, which is only half-an-hour’s run by train from the city, and seemed quite unable to understand how we could prefer a week’s coaching in beautiful scenery to a week at the Exhibition.
“And you crossed to Nelson and came all that way round, when one night by boat direct from Wellington would have landed you here!” they exclaimed.
“But then we would not have seen all that part of the country!” Mrs Greendays pleaded.
“Oh, the country! Well, I suppose it all seems very wonderful to you but to us, you see, who are used to it . . . ! Personally I never could be bothered going to Rotorua and through the gorges and all that rubbish,—when I
