She looked at me pityingly.
"Didn't you know we was in mourning?" she demanded, bristling with importance.
I instantly made a penitent face, then glanced appreciatively at her gown, but she gave no evidence of being a physiognomist. She failed to take note of my contrite expression.
"You can't go sight-seeing in here!" she said.
"Not even a little way?"
I accompanied this plea by the display of a shining half-crown, which I carried in my glove for emergency. That's one good thing about being away from the United States—you don't have to regard money so tenderly. You realize that shillings and francs and lire were made to spend for souvenirs and service, but dollars—ugh! They were made to put in the bank! So I twinkled this ever-ready half-crown temptingly in the morning light, but she shook her head again.
"While we was in mourning?" she demanded, with a gasp of outraged propriety. "Why—wha'ud the minister say?"
At this I turned away sadly—for I had been in England long enough to know there's never any use trying to surmise what the minister 'ud say!
"Just the same, you'd make a dandy old servant—and I'm a great mind to buy you and put you in my suit-case, along with the Sheffield candlesticks," I thought, as I made my way back to the station.
During my absence a train had come clattering in—and it stood stock-still now, while the engineer and the station-master held a long conversation over a basket of homing pigeons which had been deposited upon the platform. I viewed the locomotive listlessly enough—the walk having taken some of my former impatient energy away, but my interest was aroused as I came upon the platform by the appearance of a servant in livery, disentangling from one of the compartments a suit-case and leather hat-box.