“My ticket! My ticket! Father has taken it away with him and he—” he paused and collected himself for a bellow of despair—“he has given me his own return ticket to _Ealing_!”
The boy in the corner looked at him as if one might have expected something like this would have occurred after all that palaver, and the brief silence that followed his sensational news was only broken by a peculiar grunt that would not be stifled. Then up spoke one of the late arrivals. Both were evidently boys of some seniority and wore bowler hats. The one who spoke now had a lean and humorous countenance lit by strangely bright eyes.
“Nick,” said he to his companion, “look out of the window. Do you see anyone coming?”
The young gentleman addressed as Nick was beaming thoughtfully as if to himself, and he did not at once obey.
“I will look myself,” said the other, rising impatiently and leaning far out. “Yes, I can see a cloud of dust. Right in the middle of it there is the figure of a man bounding along the road at such a break-neck speed that his feet are scarcely touching the ground at all. It appears,” he added, turning to Arthur, “to be your sportsmanlike father.” He coughed. “His chances of catching us are somewhat small, of course. The train is now going at full speed. Your father is certainly making a very fine effort indeed ... his movements are not unlike those of a good-class cat ... but he will, I fear, be outdistanced by the puff-puff. Your father——”
The fat boy could stand this no longer. He pushed his head fiercely out of the window under the other’s arm.
“Where?” he demanded. “Where’s my father?” He looked harder still. “Why,” said he, “we’re only just out of the station. There’s no cloud of dust at all.”
“No,” confessed the other. “Now that I come to look with my other eye I must admit that I do not see it so clearly myself. Still there might have been. It is a pretty picture to conjure up—your father absolutely running himself to a standstill to get back his ticket to Ealing.”
After this there was silence for a little while. The bright-eyed youth resumed his seat and appeared to be thinking things over. He threw his bowler on to the rack and passed a hand thoughtfully over his hair.