Part 3 (1/2)

Vesper was himself again when his feet touched the sh.o.r.e. He looked about him, saw the bright little town of Yarmouth, black rocks, a blue harbor, and a glorious sky. His contemplation of the landscape over, he reflected that he was faint from hunger. He turned his back on the steamer, where his fellow pa.s.sengers had recently breakfasted at fine tables spread under a ceiling of milky white and gold, and hurried to a modest eating-house near by from which a savory smell of broiled steak and fried potatoes floated out on the morning air.

He entered it, and after a hasty wash and brush-up ate his breakfast with frantic appet.i.te. He now felt that he had received a new lease of life, and b.u.t.toning his collar up around his neck, for the temperature was some degrees lower than that of his native city, he hurried back to the wharf, where the pa.s.sengers and the customs men were quarrelling as if they had been enemies for life.

With ingratiating and politic calmness he pointed out his trunk and bicycle, a.s.sured the suspicious official that although he was an American he was honest and had nothing to sell and nothing dutiable in the former, and that he had not the slightest objection to paying the thirty per cent deposit required on the latter; then, a prey to inward laughter at the enlivening spectacle of open trunks and red faces, he proceeded to the railway station, looking about him for other signs that he was in a foreign country.

Nova Scotia was very like Maine so far. Here were the Maine houses, the Maine trees and rocks, even the Maine wild flowers by the side of the road. He thoughtfully boarded the train, scrutinized the comfortable parlor-car, and, after the lapse of half an hour, decided that he was not in Maine, for, if he had been, the train would certainly have started.

As he was making this reflection, a dapper individual, in light trousers, a s.h.i.+ny hat, and with the indescribable air of being a travelling salesman, entered the car where Vesper sat in solitary grandeur.

Vesper slightly inclined his head, and the stranger, dropping a neat leather bag in the seat next him, observed, ”We had a good pa.s.sage.”

”Very good,” replied Vesper.

”n.o.body sick,” pursued the dapper individual, taking off his hat, brus.h.i.+ng it, and carefully replacing it on his head.

”I should think not,” returned Vesper; then he consulted his watch. ”We are late in starting.”

”We're always late,” observed the newcomer, tartly. ”This is your first trip down here?”

Vesper, with the reluctance of his countrymen to admit that they have done or are doing something for the first time, did not contradict his statement.

”I've been coming to this province for ten years,” said his companion.

”I represent Stone and Warrior.”

Vesper knew Stone and Warrior's huge dry-goods establishment, and had due respect for the opinion of one of their travellers.

”And when we start we don't go,” said the dry-goods man. ”This train doesn't dare show its nose in Halifax before six o'clock, so she's just got to put in the time somewhere. Later in the season they'll clap on the Flying Bluenose, which makes them think they're flying through the air, because she spurts and gets in two hours earlier. How far are you going?”

”I don't know; possibly to Grand Pre.”

”A pretty country there, but no big farms,--kitchen-gardening compared with ours.”

”That is where the French used to be.”

”Yes, but there ain't one there now. The most of the French in the province are down here.”

Vesper let his surprised eyes wander out through the car window.

”Pretty soon we'll begin to run through the woods. There'll be a shanty or two, a few decent houses and a station here and there, and you'd think we were miles from nowhere, but at the same time we're running abreast of a village thirty-five miles long.”

”That is a good length.”

”The houses are strung along the sh.o.r.es of this Bay,” continued the salesman, leaning over and tapping the map spread on Vesper's knee. ”The Bay is forty miles long.”

”Why didn't they build the railway where the village is?”

”That's Nova Scotia,” said the salesman, drily. ”Because the people were there, they put the railroad through the woods. They beat the Dutch.”

”Can't they make money?”