Conceding further that on a big liner's second day out the weather continues fine, the Americans among the first-cabin passengers begin making acquaintances; and, under official guidance, go on trips of exploration and discovery to the engine room and the steerage and the steward's domain. Card games are organised and there is preliminary talk of a ship's concert. The British travellers, on the other hand, continue for the most part to hold themselves aloof. This also was true of the second day's passage of the _Mesopotamia_. Keller--or Cole, to use the name which he now used--met some congenial fellow countrymen in the smoking room and played bridge with them for small stakes during most of the afternoon. Bronston, who apparently did not care for cards, saw his warder only at the lunch hour, preferring to spend the time in his steamer chair upon the deck, enjoying the air, which was balmy and neither too warm nor yet too cool, but just right. Presently as he sat there he fell into a conversation--which was at first desultory, although it shortly took on a more animated character--with a rather fluffy young lady who occupied the steamer chair next his own. She dropped a book which she had been reading; he picked it up and returned it to her. That was how it started, at first with an interchange of polite commonplaces, then with a running bestowal of small confidences on the part of the young lady, who proved to be talkative. By bits and snatches it developed that her name was Miss Lillian Cartwright and that her home was in Evanston, Illinois. There were several other Evanston people on the boat--she pointed out a group of them some distance down the deck--but she was not travelling with them. She was travelling with her uncle, Major Slocum. Perhaps her new acquaintance had heard of her uncle, Major Slocum? He was a prominent attorney in Chicago, quite a prominent attorney, and he was also on the staff of the present governor of Illinois, and in former years had taken a deep interest in the welfare of the Illinois National Guard. "Possibly you may have seen his name in the papers," she said. "Uncle is always getting into the papers."