other seat rather than face this divine apparition; but there was no help for it, since all the others were filled: so I sat down a little sheepishly, I dare say. Almost before we were well out of the station we had got into a conversation, and it was she who began it.[Pg 36] [Pg 36] "You are an Englishman, I think?" she said, looking at me with a frank and pleasant smile. "Yes," I answered, colouring, though why I should have been ashamed of my nationality for that solitary moment of my life I cannot imagine,—unless, perhaps, because she was a Canadian; "but how on earth did you discover it?" "You would have been more warmly wrapped up if you had lived long in Canada," she replied. "In spite of our stoves and hot bricks, you'll find yourself very cold before you get to your journey's end." "Yes," I said; "I suppose it's rather chilly late at night in these big cars." "Dreadfully; oh, quite terribly. You ought to have a rug, you really ought. Won't you let me lend you one? I have another under the seat here." "But you brought that for yourself," I interposed. "You will want it by-and-by, when it gets a little colder." "Oh no, I shan't. This is warm enough for me; it's wolverine. You have a mother?" What an extraordinary question, I thought, and what an unusually friendly girl! Was she really quite as simple-minded as she seemed, or could she be the "designing woman" of the novels? Yes, I admitted to her cautiously that I possessed a maternal parent, who was at that moment safely drinking her tea in a terrace at South Kensington. "I have none," she said, with an emphasis on the personal pronoun, and a sort of appealing look in her big eyes. "But you should take care of yourself, for her sake. You really must take my rug. Hundreds, oh, thousands of young Englishmen come out here, and kill themselves their first winter by imprudence." Thus adjured, I accepted the rug with many thanks and apologies, and wrapped myself warmly up in the corner, with a splendid view of my vis-à-vis.[Pg 37] [Pg 37] Exactly at that moment, the ticket collector came round upon his official tour. Now, on American and Canadian railways, you do not take
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