Part 2 (2/2)

”Here I am riding the way that the train is going when I like the other way!” she said, jumping up. ”Let us change places.”

”You dear mouse! You're always so thoughtful!” said the other beautiful one, complying.

Now she was facing Phil. Reminded that the suburbs of London were so uninteresting that he might be caught staring at a face short of the window instead of looking out it, he began to read his paper diligently. When they had left the chimney pots behind, he found that the plain one's objection to riding the way that the train was going apparently no longer applied; for she crossed over in a sudden, impulsive movement which seemed characteristic of a restless nature and with a sweeping gesture out of the window began talking of familiar landmarks.

Evidently both had been long absent from England, which was not their home. They mixed French with English in that bi-lingual facility which does not mean an interlarding of words but bursts of sentences. They criticised and compared what they saw with the Continent, and of the two the plain one seemed to get more enthusiasm out of their return.

Having both faces in the tail of his eye, Phil wondered why the plain one should ever want to travel in the other's company. He drifted into a comparative a.n.a.lysis of the two: The one with her ma.s.ses of black hair, her small forehead, her luminous eyes, straight nose and expressive mouth, with its full lips and the oval chin--a cla.s.sic type of its kind; the other with chestnut hair also in ma.s.ses, but brushed unbecomingly back from the high, broad forehead, the large, black-brown eyes wide apart, a squarish chin and a lump of a nose. Yet a.n.a.lysed there was a resemblance; the genius touch of a sculptor might have transformed one face if it were plastic into the other. The features of one made an ensemble; those of the other were a.s.sertively in rebellion with one another.

But the amazing likeness was in the voices. Closing his eyes, Phil had difficulty in telling which one of the two was speaking. Both voices were pleasant, though the beautiful girl's voice seemed much the pleasanter of the two when his eyes were open and the plain one's an imitation.

He thought he should like to get acquainted, but he had not the courage. He could not offer them papers or magazines when evidently they were not in a mood to read. Besides, that sort of thing is not done in England, or, for that, matter, in America, as a rule, on short train journeys. Except for that one glance from the beautiful one, which was to any human being in sight as an audience, he had no sign that they recognised that there was any one else in the compartment.

”I shall be glad to be in Truckleford again, shan't you?” asked the plain girl.

”Of course I shall! I can see Uncle Arthur waiting on the platform for us now.”

”And hear him say Henriette, my dear, and Helen, my dear!”

Then they were surprised by the young man opposite them declaring that he must be about their seventeenth degree cousin and that he was going to Truckleford, too.

”Really!” they exclaimed together.

He might have known what they would say. He had wondered if Americans used guess as often as the English use really. There are many kinds of reallys: forbidding, surprised, sceptical, inquiring. This was all kinds. It was also the kind that leaves the next move with the other person.

”That is, if the Reverend Arthur Sanford, of Truckleford,” Phil explained, ”is my sixteenth cousin and you are Henriette and Helen Ribot, and my father, the Reverend Franklin Sanford, of Longfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, has reckoned accurately.”

”It sounds very mathematical,” said Helen, the plain one, thoughtfully, looking toward Henriette to take the lead, which she did charmingly.

”We've heard about you, Cousin Philip Sanford,” she said, and her eyes were sparkling into his in a way that made it difficult to look away; ”let us consider ourselves introduced.”

There was a touch of the grand manner about the way she did this; in part it was mischievous, her eyes said. But she did it delightfully, and Helen, who held out her hand in turn, seemed plainer than ever.

But she arrested his attention with her remark:

”I had a suspicion that it was you all the time.”

”Why?”

”You'll see, later.” He was conscious of a closer scrutiny of his features, and she added triumphantly: ”Yes, you'll see, later.”

Then she sank back on the cus.h.i.+ons. When seventeenth cousin meets seventeenth cousin for the first time there is enough to say. Helen looked from one to the other, listening. It seemed her natural role.

Phil almost forgot her existence until the train stopped at Truckleford and they stepped down on the station platform to be welcomed by an elderly clergyman.

”Taller than your father! I like the Sanfords to be tall,” he said to Phil. ”And, Henriette, now I have you I'll not let you go all summer.

You can do your painting here.” He gave her a fond glance. ”And you, Helen, you will have to stay if Henriette stays.”

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