Love Among the Chickens | Page 8

type of fellow-traveler whom he hoped to
keep out. He had noticed the girl at the booking office. She had waited
by the side of the line, while the elderly gentleman struggled gamely
for the tickets, and he had plenty of opportunity of observing her
appearance. For five minutes he had debated with himself as to whether
her hair should rightly be described as brown or golden. He had
decided finally on brown. It then became imperative that he should
ascertain the color of her eyes. Once only had he met them, and then
only for a second. They might be blue. They might be gray. He could
not be certain. The elderly gentleman came to the door of the
compartment and looked in.
"This seems tolerably empty, my dear Phyllis," he said.

Garnet, his glance fixed on his magazine, made a note of the name. It
harmonized admirably with the hair and the eyes of elusive color.
"You are sure you do not object to a smoking carriage, my dear?"
"Oh, no, father. Not at all."
Garnet told himself that the voice was just the right sort of voice to go
with the hair, the eyes, and the name.
"Then I think--" said the elderly gentleman, getting in. The inflection of
his voice suggested the Irishman. It was not a brogue. There were no
strange words. But the general effect was Irish. Garnet congratulated
himself. Irishmen are generally good company. An Irishman with a
pretty daughter should be unusually good company.
The bustle on the platform had increased momently, until now, when,
from the snorting of the engine, it seemed likely that the train might
start at any minute, the crowd's excitement was extreme. Shrill cries
echoed down the platform. Lost sheep, singly and in companies, rushed
to and fro, peering eagerly into carriages in the search for seats.
Piercing cries ordered unknown "Tommies" and "Ernies" to "keep by
aunty, now." Just as Ukridge returned, the dreaded "Get in anywhere"
began to be heard, and the next moment an avalanche of warm
humanity poured into the carriage. A silent but bitter curse framed itself
on Garnet's lips. His chance of pleasant conversation with the lady of
the brown hair and the eyes that were either gray or blue was at an end.
The newcomers consisted of a middle-aged lady, addressed as aunty; a
youth called Albert, subsequently described by Garnet as the rudest boy
on earth--a proud title, honestly won; lastly, a niece of some twenty
years, stolid and seemingly without interest in life.
Ukridge slipped into his corner, adroitly foiling Albert, who had made
a dive in that direction. Albert regarded him fixedly for a space, then
sank into the seat beside Garnet and began to chew something
grewsome that smelled of aniseed.

Aunty, meanwhile, was distributing her weight evenly between the toes
of the Irish gentleman and those of his daughter, as she leaned out of
the window to converse with a lady friend in a straw hat and hair
curlers. Phyllis, he noticed, was bearing it with angelic calm. Her
profile, when he caught sight of it round aunty, struck him as a little
cold, even haughty. That, however, might be due to what she was
suffering. It is unfair to judge a lady's character from her face, at a
moment when she is in a position of physical discomfort. The train
moved off with a jerk in the middle of a request on the part of the
straw-hatted lady that her friend would "remember that, you know,
about him," and aunty, staggering back, sat down on a bag of food
which Albert had placed on the seat beside him.
"Clumsy!" observed Albert tersely.
"Albert, you mustn't speak to aunty so."
"Wodyer want sit on my bag for, then?" inquired Albert.
They argued the point.
Garnet, who should have been busy studying character for a novel of
the lower classes, took up his magazine and began to read. The odor of
aniseed became more and more painful. Ukridge had lighted a cigar,
and Garnet understood why Mrs. Ukridge preferred to travel in another
compartment. For "in his hand he bore the brand which none but he
might smoke."
Garnet looked stealthily across the carriage to see how his lady of the
hair and eyes was enduring this combination of evils, and noticed that
she, too, had begun to read. And as she put down the book to look out
of the window at the last view of London, he saw with a thrill that it
was "The Maneuvers of Arthur." Never before had he come upon a
stranger reading his work. And if "The Maneuvers of Arthur" could
make the reader oblivious to surroundings such as these, then, felt
Garnet, it was no common book--a fact which he