Then there were several couples, who had two or three children with them; and one poor lady who was travelling all alone with five children, and the largest only twelve years old; and there were some Englishmen with guns and fishing-rods and spy-glasses and almost every thing you could think of that could be cased in leather and carried on a journey,—one of them even had a bath-tub, a big, round bath-tub, in addition to every thing else. He had a man-servant with him who carried all these things, or else he never could have got on at all. The man's name was Felix. That is a Latin word which means "happy," but I don't think this poor fellow was happy at all. He was a Frenchman. I don't know how he came to be an Englishman's servant, but I suppose the Englishman had lived a great while in France, and had found him there. Felix's master always talked French with him; so Felix had not learned much English, and it would have made you laugh to see him clap his hand to his head when anybody said any thing he could not understand. He would pound his head as if he could drive the meaning in that way; and then he would pull his thin hair; and then sometimes he would turn round and round as fast as a top two or three times. When he came into the cars loaded down with the guns and the rods and the bundles and the bath-tub, his master would tell him to put them down in the corner; then the porter would come along and say:—
"Look here! you can't have all these things in here," and then Felix would say:—
"Vat dat you say, sare?"
Then the porter would repeat it; and Felix would say again:—
"Vat dat you say, sare?"
And then the porter would get angry, and pick up some of the things, and lay them on Felix's back, and tell him to carry them off; and there Felix would stand stock-still, with the things on his back, till his master appeared. Then he would pour out all his story of his troubles in French, and the Englishman would be very angry with the porter, and say that he would have his things where he pleased; and the porter would say he should not. He must put them under his berth or in the baggage car; and poor Felix would stand all the while looking first in the porter's face and then in his master's, just like a dog that is waiting for his master to tell him which way to run for a thing. Great drops of perspiration would stand on his forehead, and his face would be as red as if it were August: he was so worried and confused. Poor Felix! he was one of the drollest sights in the whole journey.
The people kept pouring in.
"Mamma, where are they all to sleep?" whispered Rob.
"I'm sure I don't know, Rob," she answered.
At last the train moved off, and the different families arranged themselves in their own sections, and it seemed a little less crowded. But there were not seats enough for all the children, and some of them were obliged to sit on the floor in the middle of the aisle. The lady who had five children had only engaged one berth: that is half of a section.