his rudeness.

"I mean," he answered, "are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute
ago?"

"I am not that man," I said; "good-night."

"Are you sure?" he persisted.

"One is not likely to forget talking to you," I retorted.

His tone had been most offensive. "I beg your pardon," he replied
grudgingly. "I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute
or so ago."

I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had
a quarter of an hour to wait. "No, it certainly wasn't me," I returned
genially, but ungrammatically. "Why, did you want him?"

"Yes, I did," he answered. "I put a penny in the slot here," he
continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: "wanted
a box of matches. I couldn't get anything put, and I was shaking the
machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man,
about your size, and--you're SURE it wasn't you?"

"Positive," I again ungrammatically replied; "I would tell you if it had
been. What did he do?"

"Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, 'They are
troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.' I said,
'They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that's what they want!'
I was feeling mad because I hadn't a match about me, and I use a lot. He
said, 'They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in;
the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient. The second penny
loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase
together with your first penny back again. I have often succeeded that
way.' Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had
been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen
to him. I dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just
discovered it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain
extent; I have got something out. I have got this."

He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton
toffee.

"Two and a penny," he remarked, bitterly. "I'll sell it for a third of
what it cost me."

"You have put your money into the wrong machine," I suggested.

"Well, I know that!" he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to
me--he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I
should have left him. "It isn't losing the money I mind so much; it's
getting this damn thing, that annoys me. If I could find that idiot Id
ram it down his throat."

We wal