"Which is which?" asked the Man, laughing, and he showed attractive white teeth.
The friendliness of his brown eyes and his laugh reassured Arethusa of her momentary feeling of alarm when he had spoken. Her exclamation had not really expected a reply, and she had been quite startled when the sympathetic eyes to which she had addressed herself had been discovered to have this voice belonging to them.
She blushed, and dropped her head. Then she raised it again, after a moment, and he was still smiling at her in the same friendly fashion, so Arethusa found courage to look at him. To her rose-colored view of the inmates of the best of all possible worlds, he seemed in that look to be a very nice man. It is true that Miss Eliza had warned her with emphasis against strange men, but the Man across from her could not be said to come anywhere near the descriptions of the Ogres against which Arethusa had been so warned. Arethusa had not had her Red-Riding-Hood Experience as yet, and it was her habit to trust.
They rode for a few moments silently, and then Peter did what had been inevitable for some time that he would do, he pitched head first out into the aisle.
"Oh!" exclaimed Arethusa, and she jumped clear out of her seat at the loud and high-pitched wail with which he made known his distress.
"That's too bad," said the Man. "But I've been afraid he was going to do that very thing."
"So have I," answered Arethusa confidentially.
And in a very short while, she was talking away as if she had known her new acquaintance all her life, with all the dimples and excitement and gestures that belonged to Arethusa. But what harm to talk to such a Nice, Kind Man? Miss Eliza had not known that she would meet this sort of Man, she was sure. She could not possibly object to a little Friendly Conversation with someone in the very same seat.
And he listened, truly interested, as Arethusa's enthusiasm began to make up for the while it had been pent, in all she told him of the coming Visit and the magnificent expectations she had of that Visit, and of Ross and Elinor.
But the motherly looking woman across the aisle had been watching Arethusa for some time also. And when Peter's sobs had ceased, and she looked up once more from her family cares to see Arethusa conversing so animatedly with her chance acquaintance, she decided at once to interfere. She had heart enough to—at least—attempt the management of any affairs coming under her notice which did not seem to her to be running just as they should.