It did draw him.
"Leave go!" he said to poppa, and his air of authority was such that poppa left go. "Is this here a lunatic party, or a young menagerie, or what? Now look here," he continued, taking Mr. Malt by the elbow and seating him with some violence in a corner seat and shutting the window. "If you've got eight tickets for yourself say so, if you haven't that's as much an' more than you are entitled to. The other gentleman——" But the Senator had already collapsed into the furthest corner and was looking fixedly through the closed glass. "Well, all I've got to say is," he went on, lowering that window with decision, "that you can't go kickin' up rows in this country same as you do at home, an' if you can't get along more satisfactory together I'll——" here something interrupted him, requiring to be transferred from the Senator's hand to the nearest convenient pocket. "As I was goin' to say, gentlemen, there isn't any what you might call strict rule about the windows, an' as far as I'm concerned, you can settle it for yourselves."
Whereupon he swung along to the next carriage, the train having started, and left us to reflect on the incongruity of an English railway guard in Germany.
It was curious, but the incident left behind it a certain coolness, so well defined that when momma suggested that the Malts' window should be lowered as it was before to give us a current of air, Mrs. Malt said she thought it would be better to abide by the decision of the guard, now that we had referred it to him, and momma said, "Oh dear me, yes," if she preferred to do so, and everybody established the most aggressively private relations with books and newspapers. It was quite a relief when Mrs. Portheris came at the next station to inquire whether, if we had no married Germans in our compartment, we could possibly make room for Isabel. Mrs. Portheris had married Germans in her compartment, two pairs of them, and she could no longer permit her daughter to observe their behaviour. "They obtrude their domestic relations," said Mrs. Portheris, "in the most disgusting way. They are continually patting each other. Quite middle-aged, too! And calling each other 'Leibchen,' and other things which may be worse. My poor Isabel is dreadfully embarrassed, for, of course, she can't always look out of the window. And as she understands the language, I can't possibly tell what she may overhear!"
We made room for Isabel, but the train to Mayence was crowded that day, and before we arrived we had ample reason to believe that conjugal affection is not only at home but abroad in Germany. The Senator, at one point, threatened to travel on the engine to avoid it. He used, I think the language of exaggeration about it. He said it was the most objectionable article made in Germany. But I did not notice that Isabel devoted herself at all seriously to looking out of the window.
CHAPTER XXVII.
"He tells me," said Miss Callis, "that you are to give him his answer at Cologne."
"Does he, indeed?" said I. We were floating down the Rhine in the society of our friends, two hundred and fifty other floaters, and a string band. We had left the battlements of Bingen, and the Mouse Tower was in sight. As we had already acquired the legend, and were sitting behind the smoke stack, there was no reason why we should not discuss Mr. Mafferton.
"I suppose he does not, by any chance, mention an alternative lady," I said carelessly.