ning with P, for instance. My Past.
Paris. Pamela."

Just for a few minutes it was comparatively easy. "Dear Past!" I sighed,
with a great sigh which for divers reasons I was sure couldn't be heard
beyond my own berth. (And though I try always even to _think_ in
English, I find sometimes that the words group themselves in my head in
the old patterns--according to French idioms.) "Dear Past, how thou wert
kind and sweet! How it is brutalizing to turn my back upon thee and thy
charms forever!"

"Oh, my goodness, I shall certainly die!" squeaked a voice in the berth
underneath; and then there was a sound of wallowing.

She (my stable-companion, shall I call her?) had been giving vent to all
sorts of strange noises at intervals, for a long time, so that it would
have been hopeless to try and drown my sorrows in sleep.

Away went the Gentle Past with a bump, as if it had knocked against a
snag in the current of my thoughts.

Paris or Pamela instead, then! or both together, since they seem
inseparable, even when Pamela is at her most American, and tells me to
"talk United States."

It was all natural to think of Pamela, because it was she who gave me
the ticket for the _train de luxe_, and my berth in the _wagon-lit_. If
it hadn't been for Pamela I should at this moment have been crawling
slowly, cheaply, down Riviera-ward in a second-class train, sitting bolt
upright in a second-class carriage with smudges on my nose, while
perhaps some second-class child shed jammy crumbs on my frock, and its
second-class baby sister howled.

"Oh, why did I leave my peaceful home?" wailed the lady in the lower
berth.

Heaven alone (unless it were the dog) knew why she had, and knew how
heartily I wished she hadn't. A good thing Cerberus was on guard, or I
might have dropped a pillow accidentally on her head!

Just then I wasn't thanking Pamela for her generosity. The second-class
baby's mamma would have given it a bottle to keep it still; but there
was nothing I could give the fat old lady; and she had already resorted
to the bottle (something in the way of patent medicine) without any good
result. Yet, _was_ there nothing I could give her?

"Oh, I'm dying, I _know_ I'm dying, and nobody cares! I shall choke to
death!" she gurgled.

It was too much. I could stand it and the terrible atmosphere no longer.
I suppose, if I had been an early Christian martyr, waiting for my turn
to be devoured might have so got on my nerves eventu