ly; "it can't be anything else." Then:
"If we only knew what is expected of us, so that we could play up to
our part. What is the last thing you remember--in Quebec?"

"The most commonplace thing in the world. I am, or I was, a member of a
vacation excursion party of school-teachers. Last evening at the hotel
somebody proposed that we go to the Heights of Abraham and see the old
battle-field by moonlight."

"And you did it?"

"Yes. After we had tramped all over the place, one of the young women
asked me if I wouldn't like to go with her to the head of the cove where
General Wolfe and his men climbed up from the river. We went together,
and while we were there the young woman stumbled and fell and turned her
ankle--or at least she said she did. I took her arm to help her back to
the others, and in a little while I began to feel so tired and sleepy
that I simply couldn't drag myself another step. That is the last that I
remember."

"I can't tell quite such a straight story," said Prime, taking his turn,
"but at any rate I shan't begin by telling you a lie. I'm afraid I
was--er--drunk, you know."

"Tell me," she commanded, as one who would know the worst.

"I, too, was on my vacation," he went on. "I was to meet a friend of
mine in Boston, and we were to motor together through New England. At
the last moment I had a telegram from this friend changing the plan and
asking me to meet him in Quebec. I arrived a day or so ahead of him, I
suppose; at least, he wasn't at the hotel where he said he'd be."

"Go on," she encouraged.

"I had been there a day and a night, waiting, and, since I didn't know
any one in Quebec, it was becoming rather tiresome. Last evening at
dinner I happened to sit in with a big, two-fisted young fellow who
confessed that he was in the same boat--waiting for somebody to turn up.
After dinner we went out together and made a round of the movies, with
three or four cafes sandwiched in between. I drank a little, just to be
friendly with the chap, and the next thing I knew I was trying to go to
sleep over one of the cafe tables. I seem to remember that my chance
acquaintance got me up and headed me for the hotel; but after that it's
all a blank."

"Didn't you know any better than to drink with a total stranger?" the
young woman asked crisply.

"Apparently I didn't. But the three or four thimblefuls of cheap wine
oughtn't to have knocked me out. It was awful stuff; worse than the _vin
ordinaire_