"All got towns?" she asked. "You, Sir? Pernambuco? I do wish you'd stick to English names. Are you all ready?"
She rang the bell.
"Now," she said, "the gentleman on the stool has to catch. The Post is going from Paris to Pontresina."
I rose and looked wildly down the car. The flapper was beckoning slightly. Her contemptuous boredom had vanished, and she looked a merry child again. I rushed, stumbled, rocked into her place; she sank with a gasp into mine.
"York to St. Ives!"
It was the paterfamilias who was up now, and the elderly relative was signing to him. In a breathless scurry she was in his place gasping beside me. For the first time in her life she spoke to me.
"What an escape!" she said. "There, he's caught—York, I mean. I don't know his proper name. It's odd, isn't it, we know each other's faces so well and yet we don't know each other's names. Now that we have towns for names, it will be far more friendly, won't it? I always called you Cicero to myself. Oh, I hardly know why—you looked a little satirical sometimes. But now you're Pontresina, of course."
"Macclesfield to Pernambuco!"
"There!" laughed my companion. "I knew Macclesfield would be caught—he's so stately, isn't he? But look how he's laughing. Do you know I never thought any of the people in this car could laugh, or even smile. I do think this Society for the Abolition of Boredom in Public Conveyances is an excellent thing, don't you?"
"Pontresina to St. Ives!"