Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/17

Rh There were a good many other people in the carriage. Some got in: some got out: I didn't notice them much.

After a long time (it was growing darker now) an old lady next me, who'd been asleep, awoke and took a basket from under the seat and put it upon her knees, and, in a little, said to me that we were 'close to London now, my dear.' I said: 'Thank you!' and looked out of the window.

Then the train stopped by a long planked platform, and the people (three now) all rose up. A clergyman got out first and pulled a glazed bag along the floor down to him. Then the old lady got out, and her daughter (as I thought) handed her down the basket and got out too.

After a little I went up to the other window and pressed my face against the pane and looked for 'the Colonel's man.' Then I thought that he mightn't be able to know me without the white-comfortered arm, so I put it out through the door, and waited.

All at once a man with thin legs in brown trousers came out from between two old ladies with band-boxes right up to me. He touched his hat. This was 'the Colonel's man.'

We took a cab and went across London, and stopped in a square before another large station, but not so large a one as the first. A porter undid the door, and we got out, and the box was taken down, and put on to a trolly, and we followed it into the station. There it was tilted beside two others onto its head (the trolly I mean), and we had ten minutes to wait before the train-gate was open.

'The Colonel's man' began talking to the porter about something. I went on a little and stood and looked at some pictures hung up by a newspaper stall. One was of a great ship in the docks, going to be launched. As I was looking—

'Come along,' said 'the Colonel's man,' taking me by the hand, 'the gate's open.'

We went along the platform together and got into a carriage pretty far up. I sat silent: and every now and then my eyelids drooped, and my head moved forward,