d windows, sweltering
and stifling, and all the faces on which a lively horror was not painted
were dull and damp with apathetic misery.

The incidents were in harmony with the abject physical tone of the
company. There was a quarrel between a thin, shrill-voiced, highly
dressed, much-bedizened Jewess, on the one side, and a fat, greedy old
woman, half asleep, and a boy with large pink transparent ears that stood
out from his head like the handles of a jar, on the other side, about a
seat which the Hebrew wanted, and which the others had kept filled with
packages on the pretense that it was engaged. It was a loud and fierce
quarrel enough, but it won no sort of favor; and when the Jewess had
given a final opinion that the greedy old woman was no lady, and the boy,
who disputed in an ironical temper, replied, "Highly complimentary, I
must say," there was no sign of relief or other acknowledgment in any of
the spectators, that there had been a quarrel.

There was a little more interest taken in the misfortune of an old
purblind German and his son, who were found by the conductor to be a few
hundred miles out of the direct course to their destination, and were
with some trouble and the aid of an Americanized fellow-countryman made
aware of the fact. The old man then fell back in the prevailing apathy,
and the child naturally cared nothing. By and by came the unsparing
train-boy on his rounds, bestrewing the passengers successively with
papers, magazines, fine-cut tobacco, and packages of candy. He gave the
old man a package of candy, and passed on. The German took it as the
bounty of the American people, oddly manifested in a situation where he
could otherwise have had little proof of their care. He opened it and was
sharing it with his son when the train-boy came back, and metallically,
like a part of the machinery, demanded, "Ten cents!" The German stared
helplessly, and the boy repeated, "Ten cents! ten cents!" with tiresome
patience, while the other passengers smiled. When it had passed through
the alien's head that he was to pay for this national gift and he took
with his tremulous fingers from the recesses of his pocket-book a
ten-cent note and handed it to his tormentor, some of the people laughed.
Among the rest, Basil and Isabel laughed, and then looked at each other
with eyes of mutual reproach.

"Well, upon my word, my dear," he said, "I think we've fallen pretty low.
I've never felt such a poor, shabby ruffia