Other lines showed plainly that, though his accessories were new, the man, unlike his portmanteau, had knocked about the world, and had got a good deal damaged in the process. The index and middle fingers of the left hand were wanting. You argued, then, that he had changed his trade more than once; while from the presence of two vertical creases on either side of a large and rather fleshy mouth, worn as it were by the pull of a bit, you further inferred that the energy he must have displayed somewhere was a thing of will rather than of temperament. He was a paradox, a rolling stone that had unaccountably contrived to gather moss.
And then you fell to wondering how so magnificently mossy a person came to be traveling third-class in his native country.
To all these problems, which did actually perplex the clergyman, his fellow-passenger, he himself provided the answer.
He had taken out his gold watch with a critical air, and timed the run from Liverpool to Crewe.
"Better service of trains than they used to have," he observed. "Same old snorer of an engine, though."
"It's not the first time I've ridden by it; nor yet the first time I've crossed the herring-pond."
"Are you making any stay in this country?"
He lapsed into meditation evidently not unpleasing; then he continued: "When you've got a mother and two sisters that you haven't seen for over fifteen years, naturally you're not in such a particular durned hurry to get away."
"My home is in England. I've made my pile out there, sir, and I've come to stay. Like to see the _Chicago Advertiser_? It may amuse you."
The clergyman accepted the paper gratefully. It did amuse him. So much so that he read aloud several paragraphs, among others the one beginning "Stephen K. Lepper, Pork-packing Prince."
It was a second or two before the horror of the situation dawned on him. That dawn must have been reflected on his face, for his fellow-passenger began to snigger.
"Ah," said he, "you've tumbled to it. Sorry you spoke? Don't apologize for smiling, sir. I can smile, myself, now; but the first time I saw that paragraph it turned me pretty faint and green. That's the way they do things out there. Of course," he added, "I _had_ to be put in; but I'm no more like a prince than I'm like a pork-packer."