“Pardong, mossoor. Ais-ker-say See-ong?”
The last word came out with a jerk of relief.
“Sion? I believe it is,” replied Fordham, blandly. “We shall have a quarter of an hour to wait, if not longer.”
If ever a man looked a thorough fool, it was the first speaker. The faultless and polished English of the reply! Here had they—his wife rather—been abusing these two men in their own tongue and in her usually loud key for upwards of half an hour. He turned red and began to stammer.
But the poor man’s confusion was by no means shared by his spouse. That imposing matron came bustling across the carriage as if nothing had happened.
“Perhaps you can tell us,” she said, “which is the best way of getting to Evolena? There is a diligence, is there not?”
Philip, who had all a young man’s aversion for a fussy and domineering matron, would have returned a very short and evasive reply. The woman had been abusing them like pickpockets all the way, and now had the cheek to come and ask for information. But to Fordham her sublime impudence was diverting in the extreme.
“There is a diligence,” he answered, “and I should say you’ll still be in time for it. But I should strongly recommend you to charter a private conveyance. Coach passengers are apt to beguile the tedium of the road with tobacco.”
This was said so equably and with such an utter absence of resentment that the lady with all her assertiveness was dumbfoundered. Then, glaring at the speaker, she flounced away without a word, though, amid the bustle and flurry attendant upon the collecting of wraps and bundles, the offenders could catch such jerked-out phrases as “Abominable rudeness?”
“Most insulting fellow!” and so forth.