Medoline Selwyn's Work

Excerpt

MRS. BLAKE.

The cars were not over-crowded, and were moving leisurely along in the soft, midsummer twilight. At first, I had felt a trifle annoyed at my carelessness in missing the Express by which I had been expected; but now I quite enjoyed going in this mixed train, since I could the better observe the country than in the swifter Express. As I drew near the end of my journey, my pulses began to quicken with nervousness, not unmixed with dread.

Captain Green, under whose care I had been placed when I left my home for the last eight years, had concluded, no doubt very wisely, that I could travel the remaining few miles through quiet county places alone. This last one hundred and fifty miles, however, had been the most trying part of the whole journey. My English was a trifle halting; all our teachers spoke German as their mother tongue at the school, and the last two years I was the only English-born pupil. Captain Green was an old East Indian officer, like my own dead father, and very readily undertook the care of a troublesome chit of a girl across the ocean, in memory of the strong friendship subsisting between himself and my father, now long since passed to other service than that of Her Gracious Majesty. The Captain was a very silent man, and therefore not calculated to help me to a better acquaintance of any language, while he did not encourage me to make friends with my traveling companions. The journey had been therefore a very quiet one to me, but I had found it delightful. I had, like most of our species, an innate love of the sea; and the long, still hours as I sat alone gazing out over the restless waters, have left one of the pleasantest of all the pictures hanging in memory's halls.

As I did not wish to be taken, even by the chance traveling companions of a few hours, for other than an English or American girl, I resolved to speak fewest possible words to any one on the journey; and when the conductor came for my ticket, I repressed the desire to ask him to tell me when my own station would be reached, and merely shook my head at the news agents who were more troublesome, if possible, than the dust and smoke which poured in at doors and windows. Captain Green had telegraphed my guardian the hour at which I would arrive, but I got so interested watching the busy crowds on the streets from my hotel window that, for a while, I forgot that I too needed a measure of their eager haste, if I were soon to terminate this long journey over land and sea. I was beginning to fear, at last, after the cars had been in motion some hours, that I might have passed my station; so I concluded to have my question carefully written down, and the next time the conductor came near me hand it to him. I had not long to wait, and giving him the slip of paper, I murmured "Please."

He read, and then looking at me very intently said:

"Are you a foreigner?"

"Oh, no; English," I said, blushing furiously.

"Why don't you speak then, when you want anything? That's what we're here for."

I bowed my head quite proudly and said, "Will you please, then, answer my question?"

"We won't be there for an hour or more....