“Yes I was,” she said, lifting her chin; she brought out a Player and lighted it herself. She puffed. “’Twas a long way, twelve cars. ’Twas a lovely dinner—chicken. One man rose up in the aisle when it was put before him and gave a cry, ‘It’s rabbit!’”

They were pleased. The man from Connemara gave his high, free laugh. The lovers were strung like bows in silent laughter, but the lady blew a ring of smoke, at which Victor aimed an imaginary weapon.

“A lovely, long dinner. A man left us but returned to the car to say that while we were eating they shifted the carriages about and he had gone up the train, down the train, and could not find himself at all.” Her voice was so moody and remote now it might be some wandering of long ago she spoke to them about.

The Welshman said, over his paper, “Shifted the carriages?”

All laughed the harder.

“He said his carriage was gone, yes. From where he had left it: he hoped to find it yet, but I don’t think he has. He came back the second time to the dining car and spoke about it. He laid his hand on the guard’s arm. ‘While I was sitting at the table and eating my dinner, the carriages have been shifted about,’ he said. ‘I wandered through the cars with the dogs running and cars with boxes in them, and through cars with human beings sitting in them I never laid eyes on in the journey—one party going on among some young people that would altogether block the traffic in the corridor.’”

“All Irish,” said the young wife, and smoothed Victor’s head; he looked big-eyed into space.

“The guard was busy and spoke to a third party, a gentleman eating. Yes, they were, all Irish. ‘Will you mercifully take and show this gentleman where he is traveling, when you can, since he’s lost?’ ‘Not lost,’ he said, ‘distracted,’ and went through his system of argument. The gentleman said he could jolly well find his own carriage. The man opposite him rose up and that was when he declared the chicken was rabbit. The gentleman put down his knife and said man lost or not, carriage shifted or not, the stew rabbit or not, the man could just the same fight back to where he had come from, as he himself jolly well intended to do when he could finish the dinner on his plate in peace.” She opened her purse, and passed licorice drops around.

“He sounds vulgar,” said the man from Connemara.

“’Twas a lovely dinner.”

“You weren’t lost, I take it?” said the Welshman, accepting a licorice drop. “Traveled much?”

“Oh dear Heaven, traveled? Well, I have. Yes, no end to it.”

“Oh my God.”

“No, I’m never lost.”

“Let’s drop the subject,” said the Welshman.