th
her mother, and did not even try to account for her defection to Mr.
Trannel.

"What's the matter with my staying, too?" he asked. "It seems to me
there are four wheels to this coach now."

He had addressed his misgiving more to Lottie than the rest; but with
the same sunny indifference to the consequence for others that she had
put on in stating her decision, she now discharged herself from further
responsibility by turning on her heel and leaving it with the party
generally. In the circumstances Mr. Trannel had no choice but to go, and
he was supported, possibly, by the hope of taking it out of Lottie some
other time.

It was more difficult for Mrs. Kenton to get rid of the judge, but an
inscrutable frown goes far in such exigencies. It seems to explain, and
it certainly warns, and the husband on whom it is bent never knows, even
after the longest experience, whether he had better inquire further.
Usually he decides that he had better not, and Judge Kenton went off
towards the tram with Boyne in the cloud of mystery which involved them
both as to Mrs. Kenton's meaning.

XXIII.

Trannel attached himself as well as he could to Breckon and Ellen,
and Breckon had an opportunity not fully offered him before to note
a likeness between himself and a fellow-man whom he was aware of not
liking, though he tried to love him, as he felt it right to love all
men. He thought he had not been quite sympathetic enough with Mrs.
Kenton in her having to stay behind, and he tried to make it up to Mr.
Trannel in his having to come. He invented civilities to show him, and
ceded his place next Ellen as if Trannel had a right to it. Trannel
ignored him in keeping it, unless it was recognizing Breckon to say,
"Oh, I hope I'm not in your way, old fellow?" and then making jokes to
Ellen. Breckon could not say the jokes were bad, though the taste
of them seemed to him so. The man had a fleeting wit, which scorched
whatever he turned it upon, and yet it was wit. "Why don't you try him
in American?" he asked at the failure of Breckon and the tram conductor
to understand each other in Dutch. He tried the conductor himself in
American, and he was so deplorably funny that it was hard for Breckon to
help being 'particeps criminus', at least in a laugh.

He asked himself if that were really the kind of man he was, and he grew
silent and melancholy in the fear that it was a good deal the sort of
man. To this morbid fancy Trannel seeme