British -- United States -- Fiction; Epistolary fiction; Married women -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
And now, Mamma, in case you have been worrying over us going into awful
places, I may as well tell you that at the end of supper our host
informed us that the whole show of the opium den had been got up for
our benefit, and was not the real thing at all!!! But whether this is
true or no I can't say; if it was "got up" it was awfully well done,
and I don't want to see any realler.
We can't get enough "drawing-rooms" on the train for everybody
to-morrow, so Octavia and I shall have one, and the senator and either
Tom or the Vicomte the other, and whoever is left out will have to
sleep in the general place. I believe it is too odd, but I will tell
you all about it when I have seen it.--If Harry writes to you and asks
about me, just say I am enjoying myself awfully, and say I am thinking
of becoming a naturalised American! That ought to bring him back at
once. I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course
as I have determined not to, I can't. I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge
got under the piano and then banged the German Governess's head as she
tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma? His temper is
the image of Harry's.
Kiss the angels for me, both of them!
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
NIAGARA
NIAGARA.
DEAREST MAMMA,--We got here this morning after such a night!--The
sleeping cars are too amusing. Picture to yourself the arrangement of
seats I told you about going to the Spleists, with a piece put in
between to make into a bed, and then another bed arranged on top, these
going all down each side and just divided from the aisle by green
curtains; so that if A. likes to take a top berth and B. an underneath
one, they can bend over their edges, and chat together all night, and
no one would know except for the bump in the curtains. But fancy having
to crouch up and dress on one's bed! And when Octavia and I peeped out
of our drawing-room this morning we saw heaps of unattractive looking
arms and legs protruding, while the struggle to get into clothes was
going on.
A frightful thing happened to poor Agnès. Tom's valet, who took our
tickets, did not get enough, not understanding the ways, and Tom and
the senator and the Vicomte had tossed up which two were to have the
drawing-room, and Tom lost; so when Hopkins, who is a timid creature,
found a berth did not mean a section, he of course gave up his without
saying anything to Tom, and as the conductor told him there was not
another on the train he wandered along and at last came to Agnès's. She
had a lower berth next our door, and was away undressing me. Hopkins
says he thought it was an unoccupied one the conductor had overlooked,
so he took it, and when Agnès got back and crawled in in the dark she
found him there!! There was a dreadful scene!! We heard Hopkins scream,
and I believe he ran for his life, and no one knows where he slept.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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