I got on board the train, a porter banged-to the door so quickly that my coat-tails were embraced between the hinges; the guard said “all right,” though it wasn’t all right; the whistle shrieked, the engine puffed, the wheels went round with a groan and a grunt, and presently we were rattling over the bridge that spans the romantic Dee, with the white walls of the Granite City glimmering in the moonlight far behind us. After extricating my imprisoned garment, I leant over the window, and began to feel very dull and sentimental. I positively think I would have wept a little, had not the wind just then blown the smoke in my face, causing me to put up the window in disgust. I had a whole first-class compartment to myself, so I determined to make the best of it. Impressed with this idea, I exchanged my hat for a Glengarry, made a pillow of my rug, a blanket of my plaid, and laid me down to sleep—“perchance to dream.” Being rather melancholy, I endeavoured to lull myself to slumber by humming such cheering airs as ‘Kathleen: Mavourneen,’ ‘Home, sweet home,’ etc—“a vera judeecious arrangement,” had it continued. Unfortunately for my peace of mind it did not; for, although the night train to London does not stop more than half-a-dozen times all the way, at the next station, and before my eyes had closed in sleep, the door of the compartment was opened, a lady was bundled in, the guard said “all right” again, though I could have sworn it wasn’t, and the train, like the leg of the wonderful merchant of Rotterdam, “got up and went on as before.”
Now, I’m not in the habit of being alarmed at the presence of ladies—no British sailor is—still, on the present occasion, as I peered round the corner of my plaid, and beheld a creature of youth and beauty, I did feel a little squeamish; “for,” I reasoned, “if she happens to be good, ‘all right,’ as the guard said, but if not then all decidedly wrong; for why? she might take it into her head, between here and London, to swear that I had been guilty of manslaughter, or suicide, or goodness knows what, and then I feared my certificate of virtue, which I got from the best of aged Scottish divines, might not save me.” I looked again and again from below my Highland plaid. “Well,” thought I, “she seems mild enough, any how;” so I pretended to sleep, but then, gallantry forbade. “I may sleep in earnest,” said I to myself, “and by George I don’t like the idea of sleeping in the company of any strange lady.”
Presently, however, she relieved my mind entirely, for she showed a marriage-ring by drawing off a glove, and hauling out a baby—not out of the glove mind you, but out of her dress somewhere. I gave a sigh of relief, for there was cause and effect at once—a marriage-ring and a baby. I had in my own mind grievously wronged the virtuous lady, so I immediately elevated my prostrate form, rubbed my eyes, yawned, stretched myself, looked at my watch, and in fact behaved entirely like a gentleman just awakened from a pleasant nap.
After I had benignly eyed her sleeping progeny for the space of half a minute, I remarked blandly, and with a soft smile, “Pretty baby, ma’am.” (I thought it as ugly as sin.)
“Yes, sir,” said she, looking pleasedly at it with one eye (so have I seen a cock contemplate a bantam chick). “It is so like its papa!”
“Is it indeed, ma’am? Well, now, do you know, I thought it just the very image of its mamma!”
“So he thinks,” replied the lady; “but he has only seen its carte-de-visite.”
“Unfortunate father!” thought I, “to have seen only the shadowy image of this his darling child—its carte-de-visite, too! wonder, now, if it makes a great many calls? shouldn’t like the little cuss to visit me.”
“Going far, ma’am?” said I aloud.
And now this queer specimen of femininity raised her head from the study of her sleeping babe, and looked me full in the face, as if she were only aware of my presence for the first time, and hadn’t spoken to me at all. I am proud to say I bore the scrutiny nobly, though it occupied several very long seconds, during which time I did not disgrace my certificate of virtue by the ghost of a blush, till, seeming satisfied, she replied, apparently in deep thought,—“To Lon—don.”