Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 24).djvu/93

Rh the rate of sixty miles an hour was an amusement to her; then she liked looking out of the window at the hamlets and country houses flying past her and imagining little stories about the people who lived in them; and finally, when she should tire of this, she had plenty of magazines and papers with which to beguile the time.

She had also the letter home to her aunt which she had begin in the train coming up from Tunbridge, and she thought she would first go on with that. So she took her bag down from the rack, found her little writing-pad and pencil, and putting the point of the latter between her pretty lips to darken it went on with the narrative of her travel adventures where she had broken off:

"I got across London from Charing Cross to Liverpool Street all right, and the cabman was very nice; and when I asked him 'How much?' he said: 'Well, since it's you, miss, we'll say five shillings,' which was very kind of him, wasn't it? and not a bit extortionate, as Jack said he would be, for it was really an immense way here, and through such crowded, horrid streets that it must have been most difficult to drive. Now I am in the Ipswich train in a carriage all to myself, for I couldn't find any other ladies to travel with, as you wished; but it doesn't really matter, for I don't feel a bit lonely or fright"

"HE PRECIPITATED HIMSELF INTO THE FARTHEST OPPOSITE CORNER."

At that instant the door was snatched open, a bag was flung in, and a tall, black-bearded man, with a big cigar in his mouth, dashed in after it. He stumbled over Lily's feet without a word of apology, shut the door behind him with a furious slam, and precipitated himself into the farthest opposite corner of the carriage. Lily looked at him in amazement and dismay. Really this was worse than anything she could have possibly foreseen. It was simply impossible for her to travel in a carriage with a man who smoked, for the smell of smoke always made her ill, always gave her a bad headache. She could not sit ten minutes in her cousin Jack's smoking-room without the atmosphere affecting her. To be shut up for two hours in the company of that big cigar was absolutely out of the question. Yet what was she to do? Was it possible for her to change carriages? She gave a despairing glance at her various possessions scattered over the seats, at her heavy dressing-bag, at her big bundle of wraps and rugs up in the rack opposite her, and which she could not even lift down herself. No, it was impossible that she could change carriages in time, and yet what on earth was she to do?