The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Simpkins Plot, by George A. Birmingham

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Title: The Simpkins Plot

Author: George A. Birmingham

Release Date: October 19, 2006 [eBook #19586]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE SIMPKINS PLOT

by

G. A. Birmingham

[Frontispiece: "No thanks. No tea for me."]

T. Nelson & Sons
London and Edinburgh
Paris: 189, rue Saint-Jacques
Leipzig: 35-37 Koeningstrasse

TO

R. H.

IN MEMORY OF MANY SUMMER EVENINGS WHEN WE DRIFTED HOME, UNTROUBLED BY
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF SIMPKINS.

THE SIMPKINS PLOT.

CHAPTER I.

The platform at Euston was crowded, and the porters' barrows piled high
with luggage. During the last week in July the Irish mail carries a
heavy load of passengers, and for the twenty minutes before its
departure people are busy endeavouring to secure their own comfort and
the safety of their belongings. There are schoolboys, with
portmanteaux, play-boxes, and hand-bags, escaping home for the summer
holidays. There are sportsmen, eager members of the Stock Exchange or
keen lawyers, on their way to Donegal or Clare for fishing. There are
tourists, the holders of tickets which promise them a round of visits
to famous beauty spots. There are members of the House of Lords, who
have accomplished their labours as legislators--and their wives,
peeresses, who have done their duty by the London season--on their way
back to stately mansions in the land from which they draw their
incomes. Great people these in drawing-rooms or clubs; greater still
in the remote Irish villages which their names still dominate; but not
particularly great on the Euston platform, for there is little respect
of persons there as the time of the train's departure draws