My companion and I, with faultless arithmetic, calculated our expenses and drew out what we considered "plenty of French money to get us to the German frontier." Then Jimmie took my companion and Mrs. Jimmie took me to the train.
Their cab got to the station first, and when we came up Jimmie was grinning, and my companion looked rather sheepish.
"I didn't have enough money to pay the extra luggage," she whispered. "I had to borrow of Mr. Jimmie."
"That's just like you," I said, severely. "Now _I_ drew more than you did."
Just then Jimmie came up with _my_ little account.
"Forty-nine francs extra luggage," he announced.
"What?" I gasped, "on that _one_ trunk?" How grateful I was at that moment for the two stored at Munroe's!
"Oh, Jimmie," I cried, "I haven't got _near_ enough! You'll _have_ to lend me twenty francs!"
My companion smiled in sweet revenge, and has been almost impossible to travel with since then, but we are one in our rage against paying extra luggage. Just think of buying your clothes once and then paying for them over and over again in every foreign country you travel through! Our clothes will be priceless heirlooms by the time we get home. We can never throw them away. They will be too valuable.
The Jimmies have been so kind to us that we nearly choked over leaving them, but we consoled ourselves after the train left, and proceeded to draw the most invidious comparisons between French sleeping-cars and the rolling palaces we are accustomed to at home. I am ashamed to think that I have made unpleasant remarks upon the discomforts of travel in America. Oh, how ungrateful I have been for past mercies!
My companion is very patient, as a rule, but I heard her restlessly tossing around in her berth, and I said, "What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing much. But don't you think they have arranged the knobs in these mattresses in very curious places?"'
Well, it _was_ a little like sleeping on a wood-pile during a continuous earthquake. But that was nothing compared to the news broken to us about eleven o'clock that our luggage would be examined at the German frontier at five o'clock in the morning. That meant being wakened at half past four. But it was quite unnecessary, for we were not asleep.