ntry.

Chapter XV. Penelope dreams.

West Belvern, Holly House
August 189-.

I am here alone. Salemina has taken her little cloth bag and her
notebook and gone to inspect the educational and industrial methods of
Germany. If she can discover anything that they are not already doing
better in Boston, she will take it back with her, but her state of
mind regarding the outcome of the trip might be described as one of
incredulity tinged with hope. Francesca has accompanied Salemina. Not
that the inspection of systems is much in her line, but she prefers
it to a solitude a deux with me when I am in a working mood, and she
comforts herself with the anticipation that the German army is very
attractive. Willie Beresford has gone with his mother to Aix-les-Bains,
like the dutiful son that he is. They say that a good son makes a good--
But that subject is dismissed to the background for the present, for
we are in a state of armed neutrality. He has agreed to wait until the
autumn for a final answer, and I have promised to furnish one by that
time. Meanwhile, we are to continue our acquaintance by post, which is a
concession I would never have allowed if I had had my wits about me.

After paying my last week's bill in Dovermarle Street, including fees
to several servants whom I knew by sight, and several others whose
acquaintance I made for the first time at the moment of departure,
I glanced at my ebbing letter of credit and felt a season of economy
setting in upon me with unusual severity; accordingly, I made an
experiment of coming third-class to Belvern. I handed the guard a
shilling, and he gave me a seat riding backwards in a carriage with
seven other women, all very frumpish, but highly respectable. As
he could not possibly have done any worse for me, I take it that he
considered the shilling a graceful tribute to his personal charms,
but as having no other bearing whatever. The seven women stared at me
throughout the journey. When one is really of the same blood, and
when one does not open one's lips or wave the stars and stripes in any
possible manner, how do they detect the American? These women looked
at me as if I were a highly interesting anthropoidal ape. It was not
because of my attire, for I was carefully dressed down to a third-class
level; yet when I removed my plain Knox hat and leaned my head
back against my travelling-pil