"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.