Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/264

244 Boy's feelings it would be to have his slower Parliamentary shunted into a siding, while the quicker Express whirled me past him at the rate of a mile a minute. Delightful! if it can be put into execution."

But it could not. For, on Percie carefully emerging from the lamp-room, and consulting a time-table and a porter, he gathered from their joint information, that the train, now about to start, was a quick train, and that the Express had already gone.

"It won't do at all," thought Percie, "for the Old Boy to reach Oxford, and find the æger man not there. It would be risking Fanny's happiness as well as my own; for he would certainly cut off the supplies, and then, the only kind of union left for us would be the Union workhouse. In my cottage near a wood, where love and Rosa would all be mine, is all very well in poetry; but the sentiment won't do when translated into prose, unless the cottage is a cottage ornée, and Rosa has the proper amount of pin-money. I must take steps to prevent the Old Boy from cutting up rough. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. I must go to Oxford in the same train with the Old Boy." And, as that venerable individual continued to remain on guard at the ticket-office until the moment of the train's departure, Percie was compelled to surmount the difficulty of obtaining his ticket, by commissioning a porter to do it for him.

"Now then! take your seats, if you please. Any more going on for Oxford?"

Certainly! Mr. Percival Wylde is going on, as soon as he has seen the Old Boy safely ensconced in a first-class carriage. He sees it; and, making a dart into another first-class carriage, the bell rings—the doors are slammed