"He's changed," said the mother.
"Three years older," said the father. "The world has humanised him,
made him fonder of us."
"And didn't you think that he looked more like our ancestor?" Mrs.
Sanford always referred to the man in the square as "ours."
"Yes, the old blood. Action reappears and likeness of feature. What
relation are those two Ribot girls? I was trying to think."
"About seventeenth," said Mrs. Sanford dreamily.
"What a lot of cousins they would make if they all stood in a row!"
mused Dr. Sanford.
CHAPTER II
TWO GIRLS ON A TRAIN
His object being to see England and not to become a member of the
menagerie of home types in a pile overlooking the Thames Embankment,
the hotel that Philip had chosen was a small one, where a truly English
headwaiter, who was not trying to conceal a German accent, treated him
with a lofty courtesy and his bath was brought by a maid instead of by
the labour-saving device of pipes.
"You rise very early," said the young woman in black at the desk.
"The King did not know that I was coming and I do just as I please,"
Phil replied; and she unbent a little from her dignity and almost
laughed.
Against the criterion of all sniffy people who talk of how many times
they have been abroad, which sometimes means only a journey from the
London to the Paris and the Paris to the Berlin menageries, he was
frankly one of the horde of tourists, rising at dawn to make
sightseeing a diligent business, who are assiduously cultivated by
shopkeepers if somewhat neglected by the nobility. When he moved on
the Tower, Westminster Abbey, or Oxford, he made no attempt to conceal
his red guidebook. He was at home with schoolmistresses from the
Middle West doing a schedule on a set sum or with the wealthy
acquaintance he had made on board ship who took him for a motor ride to
Canterbury.
Now he was on the way to Truckleford to spend the night, in response to
the invitation of the sixteenth degree cousin. Up to the moment of
starting he thought that he should have the compartment to himself,
when two young women appeared, both a trifle short of breath. So
impressionable a tourist as himself could not fail to notice that the
one who entered first was strikingly good-looking, a girl with a
quality of manner and dress which he associated with the Continent,
though he had never been there.
"We caught it, at any rate!" she gasped, dropping into a seat.
"Just about!" said the other, who was as distinctly plain at first
glance as the other was attractive. "But your run has given you a
lovely colour!" she added admiringly. If the one wished to be shown up
by contrast for her beauty and the other for her plainness, they had an
object in travelling together.
"My hair must be in a shocking state, though," said the beautiful one,
as Phil already designated her in his mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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