Page:Aaron's Rod, Lawrence, New York 1922.djvu/241

, round his nose, and a solidly-planted posterior. He quite enjoyed the pantomime of the young foreigners. The other passengers said something to him, and he answered laconic. Then they all had the faint sneer-grin round their noses. A woman in the corner grinned jeeringly straight in Francis' face. His charm failed entirely this time: and as for his commandingness, that was ineffectual indeed. Rage came up in him.

"Oh well—something must be done," said he decisively. "But didn't you put something in the seat to reserve it?"

"Only that New Statesman—but he's moved it."

The man still sat with the invisible sneer-grin on his face, and that peculiar and immovable plant of his Italian posterior.

"Mais—cette place était réservée—" said Francis, moving to the direct attack.

The man turned aside and ignored him utterly—then said something to the men opposite, and they all began to show their teeth in a grin.

Francis was not so easily foiled. He touched the man on the arm. The man looked round threateningly, as if he had been struck.

"Cette place est réservée—par ce Monsieur—" said Francis with hauteur, though still in an explanatory tone, and pointing to Aaron.

The Italian looked him, not in the eyes, but between the eyes, and sneered full in his face. Then he looked with contempt at Aaron. And then he said, in Italian, that there was room for such snobs in the first class, and that they had not any right to come occupying the place of honest men in the third.

"Già! Già!" barked the other passengers in the carriage.

"Loro possono andare prima classa—prima classa!" said the woman in the corner, in a very high voice, as if talking to deaf people, and pointing to Aaron's luggage, then along the train to the first class carriages.

"C'e posto là," said one of the men, shrugging his shoulders.

There was a jeering quality in the hard insolence which made Francis go very red and Angus very white. Angus