y 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.

"Al_bert_, 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 had long since suspected.

The train raced on toward the sea. It was a w