“My maid?  My tyrant!” snorted the old lady.  “She’s the one creature on earth I am afraid of, and she knows it.  When we got to Dover, and she saw the Channel wobbling about a little, she said it was a great nasty wet thing, and she wouldn’t go on it.  When I insisted, she showed symptoms of seasickness; and in consequence she is waiting for me in Dover till I finish the business that’s taking me to Italy.  I had no more experience than she, but I had courage.  It’s perhaps a question of class.  Servants consider only themselves.  You, too, I see, have courage.  I was inclined to think poorly of you when you first came in, and to wish I’d been extravagant enough to take the two beds for myself, because I thought you were afraid of Beau.  Yet now you’re patting him.”

“I was rather afraid at first,” I admitted.  “I never met an English bull dog socially before.”

“They’re more angels than dogs.  Their one interest in life is love—­for their friends; and they wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Larger game would be more in their way, I should think,” said I.  “But I’m glad he likes me.  I like to be liked.  It makes me feel more at home in life.”

“H’m!  That’s a funny idea!” remarked the old lady. “‘At home in life!’ You’ve made yourself pretty well at home in this wagon-lit, anyhow, taking off all your clothes and putting on your nightgown.  I should never have thought of that.  It seems hardly decent.  Suppose we should be killed.”

“Most people do try to die in their nightgowns, when you come to think of it,” said I.

“Well, you have a quaint way of putting things.  There’s something very original about you, my dear young woman.  I thought you were mysterious at first, but I believe it’s only the effect of originality.”

“I don’t know which I’d rather be,” I said, “original or mysterious, if I couldn’t afford both.  But I’m not a young woman.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed the old lady, wrinkling up her eyes to stare at me.  “I may be pretty blind, but it can’t be make-up.”

I laughed.  “I mean je suis jeune fille.  I’m not a young woman.  I’m a young girl.”

“Dear me, is there any difference?”

“There is in France.”

“I’m not surprised at queer ideas in France, or any other foreign country, where I’ve always understood that anything may happen.  Why can’t everybody be English?  It would be so much more simple.  But you’re not French, are you?”

“Half of me is.”

“And what’s the other half, if I may ask?”

“American.  My father was French, my mother American.”

“No wonder you don’t always feel at home in life, divided up like that!” she chuckled.  “It must be so upsetting.”

“Everything is upsetting with me lately,” I said.

“With me too, if it comes to that—­or would be, if it weren’t for Beau.  What a pity you haven’t got a Beau, my dear.”