My mistress says they manage things more quietly here. I can’t say whether or not I’m glad of it, for I like a bit of a spree, now and then, to keep the life in me--for the English are wonderful quiet; you might as well travel with a lot of dummies, as with them: and the suspicious looks they cast on you, if you only speak civil to them, or look twice their way; the ladies rowling themselves up in shawls, in the corners of the railway carriage, and keeping their eyes fixed, as if it was a sin to be civil. I travel with my mistress, FIRST CLASS--aunt dear, let all the people know _that_, coming from mass, Sunday morning--so I see their ways; and the gentlemen bury their noses in a mighty perplexing sort of paper-covered book, called “Bradshaw,” or in a newspaper, which they read to themselves and keep to themselves, never offering to lend the “news” to any one, only shifting it into their pockets, as if they could get more out of it there. They scramble in and out of the carriages, without ever moving their hats, or offering to help the ladies out or in. The truth is they’re a good people; but uncommon surly, or uncommon shy. And as to that book, “Bradshaw,” I thought it must be diverting; people bought it so fast at the railway stations; and you see it sticking out of the pockets of the little scutty coats that are all the fashion, and out of the bags the ladies nurse like babies on their laps, and which they spend months of their time on, to make them look as if made of odds and ends of carpet--which, indeed, they do. I asked my mistress if she would not like to have “Bradshaw,” it must be such pleasant reading. So, with the same quiet smile with which she does every thing, she bought it, and gave it to me, saying: “There it is, Ellen; I hope you may understand it.” I was a little hurt, and made answer-- “Thank you kindly, ma’am: nothing puzzles me upon the print but foreign languages or, may-be, Latin.” And as we were going down to Cranley Hurst, I fixed my mistress in the first class, and myself opposite her, with a _rale_ carpet-bag on my lap, and my “Bradshaw” in my hand. “You may read if you like, Ellen,” said my mistress, the smile twinkling in her eyes (I’m sure her eyes were mighty soft and sly when she was young.) “Thank you, ma’am,” I answered; “one of my mother’s second cousins married a ‘Bradshaw,’ and may-be I’d find something about his family here.” A gentleman stared at me over his “Bradshaw,” and a mighty pert little old lady, who was reading her “Bradshaw,” let down her glass and asked me when I left Ireland. [Aunt dear, how did she know I was Irish?] I looked and looked at one page--and then at another--leaf after leaf--it was about trains, and going and coming--and figures in, and figures out--all marked, and crossed, and starred--up trains, down trains, and Sunday trains--without a bit of sense.