afternoon too. Would you object
to my being in the same train? I wouldn't suggest such a thing, only
you see as you're a stranger in the country, I might be able to help
you a little."

"How splendid!" I exclaimed. "It seems almost too good to be true. You
can't fancy what a relief it is to my mind."

He looked pleased at that, and said I was very kind, though I should
have thought it was the other way round.

"I'll get your ticket then," he went on. "If you'll give me twenty-five
dollars--five pounds, you know--I'll hand you back the change; but I'm
afraid it won't be much."

"Change?" I echoed. "Why, I supposed it would be ever so much more than
five pounds to get to Chicago, which is almost in Central America,
isn't it?"

"The people who live there think it's central," said Mr. Brett. "But
they make the railroad men keep prices down, so that dissatisfied New
Yorkers can afford to go and live there. It isn't a bad journey, you'll
find. I think it will interest you. You sleep and eat in the train, you
know."

"What fun!" I exclaimed. "I've never slept in a train, even on the
Continent."

"If you had, it would be different from this one," said he. "Can you be
ready in twenty-five minutes? The train which we call the Twentieth
Century, starts at 2.45."

"I'm ready now," said I. "The sooner we're on the way the better. But
oh, about Vivace. Will they allow him to sleep and eat too?"

"I expect I can arrange that," Mr. Brett answered, in such a confident
way that I felt sure he could do it, or anything else he set out to do.
It really was lucky for me that he happened to be travelling West that
same day, and such an extraordinary coincidence, too.

"Are you going on journalistic business?" I asked.

"No, it's business I'm undertaking for a friend," he explained. "But I
hope to get something good for myself out of it in the end."

"Oh, I do hope you will," I replied. "I'm sure you deserve to."

"I'm sure I don't," said he, laughing. "But I shall try hard for it,
all the same. You know, you told me to be ambitious."

"I know I did," I answered.

A moment later he said that he must hurry off and attend to the
tickets, and I had only time to glance through some papers the waiter
brought me, with columns full of Mohunsleigh's marriage, when he was
back again with a cab.

While I read an account of the wedding, and gushing paragraphs about
me, I wondered if there mightn't be things not so flattering in the