While Salemina went to purchase the three first-class tickets, I superintended the porters as they disposed our luggage in the van, and in so doing my eye lighted upon a third-class carriage which was, for a wonder, clean, comfortable, and vacant. Comparing it hastily with the first-class compartment being held by Francesca, I found that it differed only in having no carpet on the floor, and a smaller number of buttons in the upholstering. This was really heartrending when the difference in fare for three persons would be at least twenty dollars. What a delightful sum to put aside for a rainy day!--that is, be it understood, what a delightful sum to put aside and spend on the first rainy day! for that is the way we always interpret the expression. When Salemina returned with the tickets, she found me, as usual, bewailing our extravagance. Francesca descended suddenly from her post, and, wresting the tickets from her duenna, exclaimed, “'I know that I can save the country, and I know no other man can!' as William Pitt said to the Duke of Devonshire. I have had enough of this argument. For six months of last year we discussed travelling third class and continued to travel first. Get into that clean hard-seated, ill-upholstered third-class carriage immediately, both of you; save room enough for a mother with two babies, and man carrying a basket of fish, and an old woman with five pieces of hand-luggage and a dog; meanwhile I will exchange the tickets.” So saying, she disappeared rapidly among the throng of passengers, guards, porters, newspaper boys, golfers with bags of clubs, young ladies with bicycles, and old ladies with tin hat-boxes. “What decision, what swiftness of judgment, what courage and energy!” murmured Salemina. “Isn't she wonderfully improved since that unexpected turning of the Worm?” Francesca rejoined us just as the guard was about to lock us in, and flung herself down, quite breathless from her unusual exertion.