At
last, observing me, he came forward, but halted on surveying the
luggage, and screamed hoarsely to the last attendant who was now
boarding the train. The latter vanished, but reappeared, as the train
moved off, with two more articles, a vacuum night-flask and a tin of
charcoal biscuits, the absence of which had been swiftly detected by
their owner.
It was at that moment that one of the loungers nearby made a peculiar
observation. "Gee!" said he to a native beside him, "it must take an
awful lot of trouble to be an Englishman." At the moment this seemed
to me to be pregnant with meaning, though doubtless it was because I
had so long been a resident of the North American wilds.
Again the Honourable George approached me and grasped my hand before
certain details of my attire and, I fancy, a certain change in my
bearing, attracted his notice. Perhaps it was the single glass. His
grasp of my hand relaxed and he rubbed his eyes as if dazed from a
blow, but I was able to carry the situation off quite nicely under
cover of the confusion attending his many bags and bundles, being
helped also at the moment by the deeply humiliating discovery of a
certain omission from his attire. I could not at first believe my eyes
and was obliged to look again and again, but there could be no doubt
about it: the Honourable George was wearing a single spat!
I cried out at this, pointing, I fancy, in a most undignified manner,
so terrific had been the shock of it, and what was my amazement to
hear him say: "But I _had_ only one, you silly! How could I wear
'em both when the other was lost in that bally rabbit-hutch they put
me in on shipboard? No bigger than a parcels-lift!" And he had too
plainly crossed North America in this shocking state! Glad I was then
that Belknap-Jackson was not present.
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