is very young one appreciates, he said: "I hope, sir, that my abrupt
entry did not disturb you. I had a rush for it, and nearly lost my
train as it was. And I hope what I said about luggage did not seem
impertinent. I was only thinking that, if I had been obliged to look
after portmanteaus, I should probably still be on the platform at
Carlisle." I hastened to say, with my best air, that I had not been
the least offended, and rather apologized for my own encumbrances
by saying that I was going South for three months, and had to take
all my possessions with me. I am not sure that I was pleased when
my friend said: "Ah, yes; the end of the vacation. You are returning
to college at Harrow, I see." It was humiliating to confess that
Harrow was a school, and I a schoolboy; but my friend took it with
great composure. Perfectly, he said; it was his error. He should
have said "school," not "college." He had a great admiration for
the English Public Schools. It was his misfortune to have been
educated abroad. A French lycée, or a German gymnasium, was not
such a pleasant place as Eton or Harrow. This was exactly the best
way of starting a conversation, and, my schoolboy reserve being
once broken, we chatted away merrily. Very soon I had told him
everything about myself, my home, my kinsfolk, my amusements, my
favourite authors, and all the rest of it; but presently it dawned
upon me that, though I had disclosed everything to him, he had
disclosed nothing to me, and that the actor, if I rightly deemed
him so, was not very proud of his profession. His nationality,
too, perplexed me. He spoke English as fluently as I did, but not
quite idiomatically; and there was just a trace of an accent which
was not English. Sometimes it sounded French, but then again there
was a tinge of American. On the whole, I came to the conclusion
that my friend was an Englishman who had lived a great deal abroad,
or else an American who had lived in Paris. As the day advanced,