there and had told her it was a good place--and they watched the white
shores of Albion recede and quoted Shakespeare and made quiet fun of their
fellow-travellers in the English way.

They were particularly amused at the precautions the bigger-sized people
had taken against the little waves--cut lemons and flasks prevailed, one
lady lay full length in a deck chair with a handkerchief over her face,
and a very broad resolute man in a bright brown "touristy" suit walked all
the way from England to France along the deck, with his legs as widely
apart as Providence permitted. These were all excellent precautions, and
nobody was ill. The personally-conducted party pursued the conductor about
the deck with inquiries, in a manner that suggested to Helen's mind the
rather vulgar image of hens with a piece of bacon rind, until at last he
went into hiding below. And the young man with the thin volume of poetry
stood at the stern watching England receding, looking rather lonely and
sad to Miss Winchelsea's eye.

And then came Calais and tumultuous novelties, and the young man had not
forgotten Miss Winchelsea's hold-all and the other little things. All
three girls, though they had passed Government examinations in French to
any extent, were stricken with a dumb shame of their accents, and the
young man was very useful. And he did not intrude. He put them in a
comfortable carriage and raised his hat and went away. Miss Winchelsea
thanked him in her best manner--a pleasing, cultivated manner--and Fanny
said he was "nice" almost before he was out of earshot. "I wonder what he
can be," said Helen. "He's going to Italy, because I noticed green tickets
in his book." Miss Winchelsea almost told them of the poetry, and decided
not to do so. And presently the carriage windows seized hold upon them and
the young man was forgotten. It made them feel that they were doing an
educated sort of thing to travel through a country whose commonest
advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelsea made
unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board
advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface
the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting
country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare's _Walks_, and Helen
initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had
been trying to realise, she said, that she was actually going to Rome, but
she percei