The long holidays were more pleasant in anticipation to both mother and son than they proved in reality.
In the working hive at 27 Queen's Gate there seemed no place for the restless, growing lad.

His mother was always shut up in the library, where she wrote her endless letters and reports and added up her accounts, and Anna was with her governess.
Malcolm would be put in Anderson's charge, the steady, reliable butler and factotum, and introduced to all the sights of London--Westminster Abbey and St.Paul's, the Tower, and the British Museum, the Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's.

Sometimes they went to Kew, or Richmond Park, or took the steamer to Hampton Court.

The nearest approach to dissipation was an afternoon spent with the Christy Minstrels.

Mrs.
Herrick would not hear of the theatre; but once, sad to relate, when Anderson was indisposed, and the footman, a rather feeble-minded young man, had been sent with Malcolm to see a panorama that was considered interesting and instructing, Malcolm, by sundry bribes and many blandishments, had seduced his guardian into accompanying him to Drury Lane, where they sat in the pit, side by side, and watched with breathless interest the never-to-be-forgotten pantomime of "Jack and the Bean Stalk." "They'll run you in for this, Master Malcolm," Charles had observed ruefully, as they hurried through the dark streets.