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 lycee, 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, the American theory gained upon me; for, though my friend told me nothing about himself, he told me a great deal about every place which we passed.  He knew the industries of the various towns, and the events connected with them, and the names of the people who owned the castles and great country-houses.  I had been told that this habit of endless exposition was characteristic of the cultured American.  But, whatever was the nationality of my companion, I enjoyed his company very much.  He talked to me, not as a man to a boy, but as an elder to a younger man; paid me the courtesy of asking my opinion and listening to my answers; and, by all the little arts of the practised converser, made me feel on good terms with myself and the world.  Yankee or Frenchman, my actor was a very jolly fellow; and I only wished that he would tell me a little about himself.

When, late in the afternoon, we passed Bletchley Station, I bethought me that we should soon be separated, for the London and North-Western train, though an express, was to be stopped at Harrow in order to disgorge its load of returning boys.  I began to collect my goods and to prepare myself for the stop, when my friend said, to my great joy, “I see you are alighting.  I am going on to Euston.  I shall be in London for the next few weeks.  I should very much like to pay a visit to Harrow one day, and see your ‘lions.’” This was exactly what I wished, but had been too modest to suggest; so I joyfully acceded to his proposal, only venturing