Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/263

Rh brood of the domestic fowl, before the process of incubation has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

The folly of this delusive feeling of security was exemplified in the case of Mr. Percival Wylde, when he saw the Old Boy walk into the Great Western Station. Fortunately for the son, the father was so intent upon hastening to secure his ticket, and ascertaining if he was in time for the train, that he passed within a yard of Percie without seeing him; and the young gentleman had the intense satisfaction of hearing his paternal relative order a first-class ticket for Oxford, and assured by the clerk that he had full ten minutes to spare. Of course, Percie's first and chiefest impulse was to keep out of sight of the Old Boy; a feat the more easily achieved from the fact of the old gentleman, after one promenade and stern scrutiny of the platform during which, Percie lay hid in a lamp-room, redolent with greasy and oily compounds that would have gladdened the heart of a Russian—either designedly or accidentally, taking up his station in front of the ticket-taker's box.

"Well!" thought Percie, in the greasy recesses of the lamp-room, "this may be regarded as a fix. What must be my plan of action? To be myself, or not to be myself—that is the question. Shall I again face the Old Boy, and have a da capo performance of our previous entertainment? No! that would be a trifle too cool: it would surpass the bounds of probability for the Old Boy to fall in, on the same day, with two individuals so strikingly like me. That won't do. Stay! a brilliant idea strikes me! What if there is an express that starts half-an-hour, or even an hour, after this train, and yet reaches Oxford before it. How gratifying to the Old