d the colonel
thoughtfully. "You can't call an open country an open country; you have
to call it a Black Forest." Mrs. Kenton sighed patiently. "But I don't
know about this Kaiserin Elisabeth business. How do we know that's the
_real_ name of the hotel? How can _we_ be sure that it isn't an _alias_,
an assumed name, trumped up for the occasion? I tell you, Bessie, we
can't be too cautious as long as we're in this fatherland of lies. What
guide-book is this? Baedeker? Oh! Bradshaw. Well, that's some comfort.
Bradshaw's an Englishman, at least. If it had been Baedeker"--

"Oh, Edward, Edward!" Mrs. Kenton burst out. "Will you _never_ give that
up? Here you've been harping on it for the last four days, and worrying
my life out with it. I think it's unkind. It's perfectly bewildering me.
I don't know where or what I am, any more." Some tears of vexation
started to her eyes, at which Colonel Kenton put the shaggy arm of his
overcoat round her, and gave her an honest hug.

"Well," he said, "I give it up, from this out. Though I shall always say
that it was a joke that wore well. And I can tell you, Bessie, that it's
no small sacrifice to give up a joke that you've just got into prime
working order, so that you can use it on almost anything that comes up.
But that's a thing that you can never understand. Let it all pass. We'll
go to the Kaiserin Elisabeth, and submit to any sort of imposition
they've a mind to practise upon us. I shall not breathe freely, I
suppose, till we get into Italy, where people mean what they say. Haw,
haw, haw!" laughed the colonel, "honest Iago's the man _I'm_ after."

The doors of the waiting-room were thrown open, and cries of "Erste
Klasse! Zweite Klasse! Dritte Klasse!" summoned the variously assorted
passengers to carriages of their several degrees. The colonel lifted his
little wife into a non-smoking first-class carriage, and established her
against the cushioned barrier dividing the two seats, so that her feet
could just reach the hot-water bottle, as he called it, and tucked her
in and built her up so with wraps that she was a prodigy of comfort; and
then folding about him the long fur-lined coat which she had bought him
at Munich (in spite of his many protests that the fur was artificial),
he sat down on the seat opposite, and proudly enjoyed the perfect
content that beamed from Mrs. Kenton's face, looking so small from her
heap of luxurious coverings.

"Well, Bessie, this would be very