The fat policeman at the gate touched his helmet. A lean, elderly man in a sort of guard's uniform hobbled obsequiously before them down the platform, opened to them a first-class compartment with a low bow and a deprecatory wave of the hand, and then impressively locked the door upon them. “The engine will be the other way, my Lord, after you leave Cannon Street,” he remarked through the open window, with earnest deference. “Are there any of your bags that you want in the compartment with you?”
Plowden had nodded to the first remark. He shook his head at the second. The elderly man at this, with still another bow, flapped out a green flag which he had been holding furled behind his back, and extended it at arm's length. 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. “I was up late last night--turned out late this morning, been late all day, somehow--couldn't catch up with the clock for the life of me. Your statement to me last night--you know it rather upset me.”