“But see here,” protested Stewart, with a glance at the bearded stranger, who was still staring steadily out of the window, “if I were you, I’d wait till I was out of Germany before saying so. It would be safer!”

“Safer!” echoed an elderly woman with a high nose. “I should like to see them harm an American!”

Stewart turned away to the window with a gesture of despair, and caught the laughing eyes of the girl who stood beside him.

“Don’t blame them too much,” she said. “They’re not themselves. Usually they are all quite [Pg 32]polite and well-behaved; but now they are perfectly savage. And I don’t blame them. I didn’t mind so much, because I’m slim and long-legged and not very dignified; but if I were a stout, elderly woman, rather proud of my appearance, I would bitterly resent being yanked out of a seat and violently propelled across a platform by a bearded ruffian with dirty hands. Wouldn’t you?”

[Pg 32]

“Yes,” agreed Stewart, laughing; “I should probably kick and bite and behave in a most undignified manner.”

The girl leaned closer.

“Some of them did!” she murmured.

Stewart laughed again and looked at her with fresh interest. It was something to find a woman who could preserve her sense of humor under such circumstances.

“You have been doing the continent?” he asked.

“Yes, seventeen of us; all from Philadelphia.”

“And you’ve had a good time, of course?”

“We’d have had a better if we had brought a man along. I never realized before how valuable men are. Women aren’t fitted by nature to wrestle with time-tables and cabbies and hotel-bills and head-waiters. This trip has taught me to respect men more than I have ever done.”

[Pg 33]

[Pg 33]

“Then it hasn’t been wasted. But you say you’re from Philadelphia. I know some people in Philadelphia—the Courtlandt Bryces are sort of cousins of mine.”

But the girl shook her head.

 Prev. P 19/186 next