“Just like drowned cats' tails,” observed Hephzy. “Ain't it awful! And they're too miserable to care. You poor thing,” she said, leaning forward and addressing the nearest, “can't I fix you so you're more comfortable?”
The woman addressed looked up and tried her best to smile.
“Oh, no, thank you,” she said, weakly but cheerfully. “We're doing quite well. It will soon be over.”
Hephzy shook her head.
“Did you hear that, Hosy?” she whispered. “I declare! if it wasn't off already, and that's a mercy, I'd take off my hat to England and the English people. Not a whimper, not a complaint, just sit still and soak and tumble around and grin and say it's 'a bit damp.' Whenever I read about the grumblin', fault-findin' Englishman I'll think of the folks on this boat. It may be patriotism or it may be the race pride and reserve we hear so much about—but, whatever it is, it's fine. They've all got it, men and women and children. I presume likely the boy that stood on the burnin' deck would have said 'twas a bit sultry, and that's all.... What is it, Hosy?”
I had uttered an exclamation. A young man had just reeled by us on his way forward. His cap was pulled down over his eyes and his coat collar was turned up, but I recognized him. He was Herbert Bayliss.
We were three hours crossing from Folkestone to Boulogne, instead of the usual scant two. We entered the harbor, where the great crucifix on the hill above the town attracted Hephzy's attention and the French signs over the doors of hotels and shops by the quay made her realize, so she said, that we really were in a foreign country.
“Somehow England never did seem so very foreign,” she said. “And the Mayberry folks were so nice and homey and kind I've come to think of 'em as, not just neighbors, but friends. But this—THIS is foreign enough, goodness knows! Let go of my arm!” to the smiling, gesticulating porter who was proffering his services. “DON'T wave your hands like that; you make me dizzy. Keep 'em still, man! I could understand you just as well if they was tied. Hosy, you'll have to be skipper from now on. Now I KNOW Cape Cod is three thousand miles off.”
We got through the customs without trouble, found our places in the train, and the train, after backing and fussing and fidgeting and tooting in a manner thoroughly French, rolled out of the station.
We ate our dinner, and a very good dinner it was, in the dining-car. Hephzy, having asked me to translate the heading “Compagnie Internationale des Wagon Lits” on the bill of fare, declared she couldn't see why a dining-car should be called a “wagon bed.” “There's enough to eat to put you to sleep,” she declared, “but you couldn't stay asleep any more than you could in the nail factory up to Tremont. I never heard such a rattlin' and slambangin' in my life.”