Then, as my female persecutress alighted on the floor of the compartment in the limp condition of a collapse, I stepped across to my original seat, and endeavoured to look as if with withers unwrung. Presently the Guard appeared, and what followed I can best render in the dramatical form of a dialogue:--
_The Guard_ (_addressing the ~Elderly Female~, who is sitting smiling with vacuity beneath the bell-pull_). So it is you who have sounded the alarm! What is it all about?
_The Elderly Female_ (_with warm indignation_). Me? I never did! I am too much of the lady. It was that young coloured gentleman in the next compartment.
[_At which the tip of my nose goes down with apprehensiveness._
_The Guard._ Indeed! A likely story! How could the gentleman ring this bell from where he is?
_Myself_ (_with mental presence_). Well said, Mister GUARD! The thing is not humanly possible. _Rem acu tetigisti!_
_The Guard._ I do not understand Indian, Sir. If you have anything to say about this affair, you had better say it.
_Myself_ (_combining discretion with magnanimousness_). As a chivalrous, I must decline to bring any accusation against a member of the weaker sex, and my tongue is hermetically sealed.
_The Eld. F._ It was _him_ who rang the alarm, and not me. He was in this compartment, and I in that.
_The Guard._ What? have you been playing at Hide-and-seek together, then? But if your story is watertight, he must have rung the bell in a state of abject bodily terror, owing to your chivying him about!
_The Eld. F._ It is false! I have been well educated, and belong to an excellent family. I merely wanted to kiss him.
_The Guard._ I see what is your complaint. You have been imbibing the drop too much and will hear of this from the Company. I must trouble you, Mam, for your correct name and address.
_Myself_ (_after he had obtained this and was departing_). Mister Guard, I do most earnestly entreat you not to abandon me to the tender mercies of this feminine. I am not a proficient in physical courage, and have no desire to test the correctness of Poet POPE'S assertion, that Hell does not possess the fury of a scorned woman. I request to be conducted into a better-populated compartment.
_The Guard_ (_with complimentary jocosity_). Ah, such young good-looking chaps as you ought to go about in a veil. Come with me, and I'll put you into a smoker-carriage. You won't be run after there!