When you are
unwilling to take your early morning coffee on the gritty, dust-covered,
one-foot-square, propped-up-with-a-leg table in your stuffy compartment,
you drink it sitting on this sofa. Three of these compartment doors were
open. The woman with the dog was in Number One. The big dog and the maid
in Number Two, and the Ring Master in Number Three (his original number,
no doubt; the clerk had only lied)--I, of course, came next in
Number Four.
Soon I became conscious that a discussion was going on in the newly
arrived circus-car whose platform touched ours. I could hear the voice
of a woman and then the gruff tones of a man. Then a babel of sounds
came sifting down the aisle. I stepped over the dog, who had now
stretched himself at full length in the aisle, and out on to
the platform.
A third gentleman in chocolate--the porter of the circus-car and a
duplicate of our own--was being besieged by a group of people all
talking at once and all in different tongues. A mild-eyed, pink-cheeked
young man in spectacles was speaking German; a richly dressed woman of
thirty-five, very stately and very beautiful, was interpolating in
Russian, and a plump, rosy-cheeked, energetic little Englishwoman was
hurling English in a way as pointed as it was forcible.
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