Philippa sat quietly in her corner, one arm thrown comfortably round Solomon’s plump little person, perfectly to that philosopher’s content. Among the various preparations for her journey, it had not occurred to the young girl to provide herself with any literature. Her eyes were consequently at leisure to occupy themselves with anything of interest that might come in their way. But the country through which the train was just then passing was flat and monotonous; she soon grew tired of staring out of the window, and she dared not amuse herself with Solomon for fear of attracting his master’s attention.
Furthermore, the dachs, by this time was contentedly asleep.
Philippa’s eyes strayed to the end of the carriage. One of the elderly ladies had already followed Solomon’s example; her sister, for sisters they unmistakably were, returned Philippa’s slight glance in her direction with a somewhat severe look of doubtful approval.
“What a forward girl!” she had been saying to herself, and Philippa almost felt the words.
She only smiled to herself, however.
“I am really going through excellent training already,” she thought, and again she turned to the window.
A moment or two later, however, some instinct, possibly merely a sensation of suppressed restlessness, led her to glance at Solomon’s master, and this time she was able to do so unobserved, for maiden-lady number two had also closed her eyes in peaceful repose.
“How ugly he is!” was Miss Raynsworth’s first idea, and the adjective was in some sense justified, for the charm of the young man’s face doubtless lay in his pleasant eyes, at present lowered so as he read. But there is ugliness and ugliness, and in the face under Miss Raynsworth’s scrutiny, in spite of its somewhat rugged features, there was nothing in the very slightest degree repellent or hard. The mouth was excellent, the rest of the features in no way remarkable, and yet not commonplace or in any sense weak, and a good mouth means a great deal. On the whole the face was interesting, and the longer Philippa observed him the more inclined she felt to modify her first somewhat wholesale opinion.
“I wonder how old he is,” she said to herself; “he might be almost any age between twenty-four and thirty-four.”
Then as he turned a leaf of his magazine, she hastily glanced away for fear of detection. There was another motive, besides that of an ever ready interest in her fellow-creatures, strongly developed in the girl; the face before her reminded her of some other that she had seen lately, though when or where she could not for some time recall. She glanced up furtively, and at last it flashed upon her, so much to her satisfaction, that she could scarcely suppress an exclamation of triumph.