The train began slowly to move.
Mr. Thorpe reflected to himself that the peerage was by no
means so played-out an institution as some people imagined.
"Ho-ho!" the younger man sighed a yawn, as he tossed
his hat into the rack above his head. "We shall both be
the better for some pure air. London quite does me up.
And you--you've been sticking at it months on end,
haven't you? You look rather fagged--or at all events you
did yesterday. You've smartened yourself so--without
your beard--that I can't say I'd notice it to-day.
But I take it every sensible person is glad to get away
from London."
"Except for an odd Sunday, now and then, I haven't put
my nose outside London since I landed here." Thorpe rose
as he spoke, to deposit his hat also in the rack.
He noted with a kind of chagrin that his companion's was
an ordinary low black bowler. "I can tell you, I SHALL
be glad of the change. I would have bought the tickets,"
he went on, giving words at random to the thought which he
found fixed on the surface of his mind, "if I'd only known
what our station was."
Plowden waved his hand, and the gesture seemed to dismiss
the subject. He took a cigar case from his pocket,
and offered it to Thorpe.
"It was lucky, my not missing the train altogether,"
he said, as they lighted their cigars.
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