down beside him. The elderly
relative--as I call her--was opposite to me. She had her small attache-case
and her knitting as usual, and she made me feel at a glance that my face
bored her intolerably. For the rest, I saw the fat paterfamilias, the
wish-I-had-a-motor lady, the pert flapper and all the crew who travel with
dejected spirits to and fro on our suburban line.

So far all was in order. Then the conductress came round.

"Tuppenny," I murmured. "Albemarle Road."

"What's your town?" she asked, taking a pencil from behind her ear.

"Town? It's Albemarle Road I want."

"But what town do you choose for Post?" she asked. "You've all got to have
a town, you know. Don't make it too long. Hurry up! I've got to write you
all down, and it's time to begin."

"Pontresina," I gasped wildly. That seemed to be the only town I had ever
heard of.

"And you, Sir?" she was asking the old gentleman.

"Macclesfield," he said very decidedly.

The elderly relative was fidgeting to say hers. I could have guessed it
would be St. Ives.

The conductress made her way from one end to the other.

"All got towns?" she asked. "You, Sir? Pernambuco? I do wish you'd stick to
English names. Are you all ready?"

She rang the bell.

"Now," she said, "the gentleman on the stool has to catch. The Post is
going from Paris to Pontresina."

I rose and looked wildly down the car. The flapper was beckoning slightly.
Her contemptuous boredom had vanished, and she looked a merry child again.
I rushed, stumbled, rocked into her place; she sank with a gasp into mine.

"York to St. Ives!"

It was the paterfamilias who was up now, and the elderly relative was
signing to him. In a breathless scurry she was in his place gasping beside
me. For the first time in her life she spoke to me.

"What an escape!" she said. "There, _he'_s caught--York, I mean. I don't
know his proper name. It's odd, isn't it, we know each other's faces so
well and yet we don't know each other's names. Now that we have towns for
names, it will be far more friendly, won't it? I always called you Cicero
to myself. Oh, I hardly know why--you looked a little satirical sometimes.
But now you're Pontresina, of course."

"Macclesfield to Pernambuco!"

"There!" laughed my companion. "I knew Macclesfield would be caught--he's
so stately, isn't he? But look how he's laughing. Do you know I never
thought any of the people in this car _could_ laugh, or even smile. I do
think t