There were so many splendid things to have, to wear, and to eat, advertised in the same kind, fatherly way, that I felt as if I had unconsciously yearned for each one of them more than for anything else in my life, and now it had been put into my head in all its fatal fascination, I couldn't possible exist another day without sending for it, to one in that procession of noble, self-sacrificing, American advertisers. I felt, too, that if anything disagreeable should happen to me, like a railway or motor car accident, I could spend the rest of my existence lying down, and still the splendid things would come running to me, if I just 'phoned or flung a stamp into space. I mentioned something of the sort to Sally. "I wonder they don't offer to choose you a husband," said I. "I didn't know advertisements could be so interesting." "What about your own?" she asked. "They're a hundred times quainter." I thought hard about the _Morning Post_ and _The Queen_, but couldn't remember anything extraordinary in the advertising line, and said so. "Perhaps you, being English, don't see anything extraordinary about a clergyman's wife offering to exchange a canary bird for six months' subscription to _Punch_; or the widow of an officer earnestly desiring an idiot lady to board with her; or a decayed gentlewoman inviting the public to give her five pounds; but we, being American, _do_," replied Sally. "Why, I'd rather read the advertisements in some of your morning papers and ladies' weeklies than I would eat." "Talking of eating, it's lunch-time," said Potter. "There'll be a big menagerie feeding in the dining-car, but there's no good waiting for it to finish, as then there'll be no food left." So we took his suggestion; and there was a crowd, but he had secured a table for four, and we squeezed ourselves into the places. I have travelled abroad with Mother and Vic, where there were Americans in the dining-car, and they have been cross because they didn't get served quickly and they have said things. But in this car going to Newport, you forgot what you had had last before the next course came, yet nobody seemed to mind. They were as patient as lambs, and simply took what was given them when they could get it, although they looked as if they were used to everything very nice at home. I suppose it must have been because they were all Americans together, eating American things, with American waiters to wait upon them and no foreigners who ought to know they wouldn't stand that sort of nonsense, hanged if they would. Some of Mrs. Ess Kay's servants had gone on before us, and some were in our train. Exactly how it was managed, I don't know; but things that would worry us into grey-haired graves don't seem to bother Americans at all; and there was the motor waiting when we arrived at the end of our journey, with a private motor omnibus for the servants and luggage.