"Much obliged to you, I am sure," the lady returned. Some of the passengers in the wagon, who had previously observed the hero of the morning, and thought him any thing else rather than a fool, looked twice at him, at this juncture, to discover what he could mean by addressing complimentary conversation to that compound of ignorance and vulgarity. It must be owned that Clara Vanderlyn, who sat on one of the back seats while the interlocutors were in front, believing the man in earnest, felt for the moment a sensation of disgust towards him and wished her card back in her reticule. But if she and some of the others were temporarily deceived, the deception was not of long continuance.
The statement by Rowan that he had never been across the Atlantic, was the one thing necessary to reassure Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame; and that point settled, she felt sure of her ground.
"How long since you were abroad, madam, may I ask?" he continued.
"Five years," answered the lady, who no doubt felt that both her duration of standing in society and the accuracy of her memory would appear the better for a little lapse of time.
"Five years, indeed? so long?" asked the scamp, with every appearance of interest. "And did you have your dear little boy with you all the time?"
"No, my physician did not think it prudent for me to take him along of me, and I left him to home with the nurse," was the reply. The fact was, really, that at the early period named her "physician" had been a drunken Indian-herb doctor, the only description of medical man likely to visit the shanty which she yet occupied,—and that she had been (perhaps better and more honorably occupied than at any time after!) doing her own work without the hope or thought of ever employing a servant.
"Dear little fellow!" said the Illinoisan, caressing the scrubbing-brush head of the repulsive youngster. "What a pity that he could not have gone with you! By the way, madam, you went by steamer, of course. Did you take steamer for Paris, or—or—St. Petersburgh?"
By this time most of the passengers began to perceive what was coming, and there were symptoms of a titter in the back seats, but nothing that warned or disturbed the victim.
"Oh, Paris, of course!" was the answer. "Dear, delightful Paris, where the shops was so handsome and the women wore such elegant bunnits!" (See guide-books.)
"You landed at Paris direct from the steamer, I suppose?" asked the tormentor, at which question the titter really began, but still too quietly to put the lady on her guard.