And now, Mamma, in case you have been worrying over us going into awful places, I may as well tell you that at the end of supper our host informed us that the whole show of the opium den had been got up for our benefit, and was not the real thing at all!!! But whether this is true or no I can't say; if it was "got up" it was awfully well done, and I don't want to see any realler.
We can't get enough "drawing-rooms" on the train for everybody to-morrow, so Octavia and I shall have one, and the senator and either Tom or the Vicomte the other, and whoever is left out will have to sleep in the general place. I believe it is too odd, but I will tell you all about it when I have seen it.—If Harry writes to you and asks about me, just say I am enjoying myself awfully, and say I am thinking of becoming a naturalised American! That ought to bring him back at once. I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course as I have determined not to, I can't. I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge got under the piano and then banged the German Governess's head as she tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma? His temper is the image of Harry's.
Kiss the angels for me, both of them!
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
NIAGARA
NIAGARA.
DEAREST MAMMA,—We got here this morning after such a night!—The sleeping cars are too amusing. Picture to yourself the arrangement of seats I told you about going to the Spleists, with a piece put in between to make into a bed, and then another bed arranged on top, these going all down each side and just divided from the aisle by green curtains; so that if A. likes to take a top berth and B. an underneath one, they can bend over their edges, and chat together all night, and no one would know except for the bump in the curtains. But fancy having to crouch up and dress on one's bed! And when Octavia and I peeped out of our drawing-room this morning we saw heaps of unattractive looking arms and legs protruding, while the struggle to get into clothes was going on.
A frightful thing happened to poor Agnès. Tom's valet, who took our tickets, did not get enough, not understanding the ways, and Tom and the senator and the Vicomte had tossed up which two were to have the drawing-room, and Tom lost; so when Hopkins, who is a timid creature, found a berth did not mean a section, he of course gave up his without saying anything to Tom, and as the conductor told him there was not another on the train he wandered along and at last came to Agnès's. She had a lower berth next our door, and was away undressing me. Hopkins says he thought it was an unoccupied one the conductor had overlooked, so he took it, and when Agnès got back and crawled in in the dark she found him there!! There was a dreadful scene!! We heard Hopkins scream, and I believe he ran for his life, and no one knows where he slept.
Agnès said it was too ridiculous and "très mauvais gout" on his part to make such a fuss over "un petit accident de voyage." "Je puis assurer Madame la Marquise," she said, "que s'il était resté c'eut été la même chose. Son type ne me dit rien!" At the same time she does not think these trains "comme il faut!"