"Well, if you mean this especial journey—" I hesitated.
"Yes, I do," she insisted. "The seats are real comfortable. Everything is." She threw out her mittened hands with a gesture that seemed to emphasize a demand for approval. "I wouldn't change a single thing. Some say it's hot; I don't think 'tis. I wouldn't mind, though, if 'twas. We're gettin' a nice draught."
I looked through the open window at the French landscape, bathed in the glory of an August moon.
"That, at least, is very satisfactory," I admitted, cheerfully.
She looked a little blank as she glanced around, and a queer expression of responsibility settled over her features, blurring their brightness like a veil.
"I see," she said, slowly. "You mean France. Yes, 'tis nice, an' they's certainly a great deal to see in it." She hesitated a moment, and then went on more rapidly. "You know," she continued, in her high-keyed, sibilant whisper, "it's some different with me from what 'tis with you. You can speak French. I heard you talkin' to the conductor. An' I suppose you've been here often, an' like it. But this is the first time I've come over to Europe. I've always meant to, sometime, but things ain't been just so's I could come. Now't I'm here, I can't stay long, an' I must say I feel kind of homesick. There's so much to see it jest makes my head swim. I come for a purpose—a purpose of my own—but now't I'm here, I want to do my duty an' see things. I declare," she added, shamefacedly, "I most hate to go to sleep nights, I'm so afraid I'll miss something an' hear about it when I git back."
I asked a conventional question, which evoked a detailed report of her journeyings. By this time Jessica had opened one eye; the two foreigners slept on peacefully. She had landed at Naples, the old lady told me; and from her subsequent remarks I gathered that she had found the Italians as a people deficient in the admirable qualities of cleanliness and modesty. She lamented, also, an over-preponderance of art galleries, and the surprising slowness of the natives to grasp intelligent remarks made in the English tongue. Aside from these failings, however, she had found Italy somewhat interesting, and she mentioned especially the grotto at Capri and the ascent of Vesuvius. She added, casually, that few of her fellow-tourists had made this latter excursion, as it was just after the severest eruptions, and the air had been full of dust and cinders. Jessica opened the other eye. I began to experience vivid interest in the conversation.
Rome, she further revealed, meant to her the Campagna and the Catacombs. On the former she had taken walks, and in the very bowels of the latter she had seemingly burrowed for days, following some mysterious purpose of her own. Her favorite time for a promenade on the Campagna, and one she paused to recommend to me, was at dusk, the place then being quiet and peaceful, owing to the fact that tourists, foolishly fearing the fever, kept away from it after sunset.
At this point Jessica sat up, arranged a pillow comfortably behind her back, and gave her undivided attention to the monologue. At last she put a question. Was the lady travelling alone? The lady hastened to explain that she was not.
"My, no," she said, briskly. "I'm a tourist—that's what they call 'em, you know, when they're with a man. They's eighteen in our party, and the man that is takin' us is Mr. James George Jackson. He's real nice. He's in one of the other cars on this train, an' they's three gentlemen with him that belong to us, too. All the rest stayed in Paris because they was tired. You see," she added, explanatorily, "we done Lourdes in two days, an' we took it off our time in Paris. We ain't got much time in Paris, anyhow, so we went an' come back at night. I s'pose the rest thought it might be tryin' in the heat, so they stayed behind an' went to Fontingblow yesterday an' up the Seen to-day. But I saw the Black Forest when we was in Germany, an' the Rhine, too, an' some of us walked from Binjen to Cooblens, so's we could git the view real well. So I thought I'd let the French river an' forest go, an' see Lourdes instead."