"Go on like what?"
"Oh, about your dreams. Only old women tell their dreams. Ha, ha, ha!"
"You are quite mistaken, Uncle Nelson, dreams have been made the subject of scientific research."
"Oh, poppycock! You'll be telling fortunes in a tea cup next, ha, ha, ha!"
"I am glad you are amused, Uncle Nelson."
"I am—it's rich—ha, ha, ha, ha!—Ha, ha, ha, ha! Thurston, will you oblige me, and tell when there's anything to look at beside these interminable forests? I'm going to nap a little."
Lord Canning resumed his watch at the window. "Beautiful forests," he thought, "for the most part untouched and untrammelled. We seem to be plunging deeper and deeper into a virgin region. I feel strangely expectant, as though something were awaiting me there. Something that I have hitherto missed in my life—my sober, colorless life—awaiting me there. If I should tell Uncle Nelson this, he would ask me what I had eaten for lunch."
In a little while he became conscious that the train was slackening speed and felt the exhilaration, of most people, at the idea of being transported higher than the ordinary level.
"Uncle Nelson!"
"Yes."