"So I find you on your travels! Well?"

His look, gay and vivacious as a boy's, interrogated hers. Elizabeth
stammered a few words in praise of Canada. But her eyes were still wet,
and the Governor-General perceived it.

"That was touching?" he said. "To die in your teens in this
country!--just as the curtain is up and the play begins--hard! Hullo,
Anderson!"

The great man extended a cordial hand, chaffed Philip a little, gave
Lady Merton some hurried but very precise directions as to what she was
to see--and whom--at Vancouver and Pretoria. "You must see So-and-so and
So-and-so--great friends of mine. D----'ll tell you all about the
lumbering. Get somebody to show you the Chinese quarter. And there's a
splendid old fellow--a C.P.R. man--did some of the prospecting for the
railway up North, toward the Yellowhead. Never heard such tales; I could
have sat up all night." He hastily scribbled a name on a card and gave
it to Elizabeth. "Good-bye--good-bye!"

He hastened off, but they saw him standing a few moments longer on the
platform, the centre of a group of provincial politicians, farmers,
railway superintendents, and others--his hat on the back of his head,
his pleasant laugh ringing every now and then above the clatter of
talk. Then came departure, and at the last moment he jumped into his
carriage, talking and talked to, almost till it had left the platform.

Anderson hailed a farming acquaintance.

"Well? What has the Governor-General been doing?"