t spilled half a cup of coffee over the
egg spots on his lapels as his unsteady and nicotine-stained fingers
all but dropped the cup.

The dining car conductor, in accordance with the general determination
to reserve the larger tables for parties traveling together, pulled
back the chair opposite the untidy man; but Eaton, with a sharp sense
of disgust, went past to the chair opposite the Englishman.

As he was about to seat himself there, the girl again looked up. "Oh,
Mr. Eaton," she smiled, "wouldn't you like to sit with us? I don't
think Father is coming to breakfast now; and if he does, of course
there's still room."

She pulled back the chair beside her enticingly; and Eaton accepted it.

"Good morning, Mr. Avery," he said to Miss Dorne's companion formally
as he sat down, and the man across the table murmured something
perforce.

As Eaton ordered his breakfast, he appreciated for the first time that
his coming had interrupted a conversation--or rather a sort of
monologue of complaint on the part of Standish addressed impersonally
to Avery.

"Extraordinarily exposed in these sleeping cars of yours, isn't one,
wouldn't you say?" the Englishman appealed across the aisle.

"Exposed?" Avery repeated, more inclined to encourage the conversation.

"I say, is it quite the custom for a train servant--whenever he fancies
he should--to reach across one, sleeping?"

"He means the porter closed his window during the night," Eaton
explained to Avery.

"Quite so; and I knew nothing about it--nothing at all. Fancy! There
was I in the bunk, and the beggar comes along, pulls my curtains aside,
reaches across me--"

"It got very cold in the night," Avery offered.

"I know; but is that any reason for the beggar invading my bunk that
way? He might have done anything to me! Any one in the car might have
done anything to me! Any one in your bally corridor-train might have
done anything. There was I, asleep--quite unconscious; people passing
up and down the aisle just the other side of a foolish fall of curtain!
How does any one know one of those people might not be an enemy of
mine? Remarkable people, you Americans--inconsistent, I say. Lock
your homes with most complicated fastenings--greatest lock-makers in
the world--burglar alarms on windows; but when you travel, expose
yourselves as one wouldn't dream of exposing oneself elsewhere.
Amazing places, your Pullman coaches! Why, any one might do anything
to a