“Is this what you call being private, sir?  I think you would find a caravan more pleasant.  Don’t you want to come to the Pullman with us?  There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at them, just as you please, and there’s plenty of room to walk about and stretch yourself a little if you want to.  There’s a smoking-room, too, that you can go to and leave whenever you like.  Come and try it.”

“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Poplington, “but I really couldn’t do that.  I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic ideas, but that is too much for me.  An Englishman’s house is his castle, and when he’s travelling his railway carriage is his house.  He likes privacy and dislikes publicity.”

“This is a funny kind of privacy you have here,” said Jone.  “And how about your big clubs?  Would you like to have them all divided up into little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally strangers to each other?”

“Oh, a club is a very different thing,” said Mr. Poplington.

Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.

We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at us for all the rest of the trip you don’t feel anything like as private as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.

But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn’t find any fault with English people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their trains for Americans who do like them.  And one thing is certain, that if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we’d be a great deal better off than we are.

Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show.  I don’t believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.  The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn’t their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the sly.  When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform, running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when I asked him to, he looked into our car.

“Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!” he said.  “What a public apartment!  I could not travel like that, you know.  Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few days.”

[Illustration:  Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]