still is,
perilously near the English of Mile End, and the ear of the Englishman,
grown critical through many studies, used to ache at it. The leader of
the troupe talked the English of the stage, which, after all, is perhaps
not quite the English of the cultured Englishman, but was not altogether
intolerable. But, by some accident, Miss Hampton had no trace of the
accent which disfigured the speech of her companions, and this little
fact of itself accounted for something in the very gradual intimacy
which grew up between herself and Paul.

The train was sauntering along in its customary easy-going fashion, when
it came to a halt at the signal of a man in corduroy trousers, a flannel
shirt which had once been scarlet, and a felt hat of no colour. The
signaller sat upon a fence and wanted a chat with the driver, who was
quite willing, in the course of his leisurely progress, to spare him
half an hour or so.

'If you ladies,' said the conductor, 'would like to stretch yourselves,
there's any amount of flowers to be got here, and there's time to waste.
There's no run back except on a Saturday, and an hour or two in the time
of arrival won't make no difference.'

So the ladies got down and went flower-hunting, whilst the driver and
the stoker and the guard sat on the fence together and talked politics
and the latest mail from England.

Paul went out with the rest, and the party chanced upon a marshy piece
of land where a species of purple iris grew in great profusion. There
was a cry of delight at the sunlit patch of colour, and everybody
charged down upon it, with the result that half of the travellers were
bogged to the knees, and there was a good deal of pully-hauley business
gone through before the last adventuress was extricated. Miss Madge
Hampton fell to Paul's share by accident of mere neighbourhood, and she
stretched out her little brown-kid-gloved hand to him with an air of
timid appeal. He pulled stanchly, but the ground gave way beneath him,
and before he knew it she was in his arms. There was a laugh all round,
and a blush on both sides, but the lady was on firm earth again, and
in a minute or two the drawling call of the conductor brought the party
back to the train. The journey was renewed, and the incident forgotten
by everybody save the dramatist, who sat coiled in his corner, with his
eyes fixed upon a book which he might as well have held upside-down.
The women of the company, five in number, were cha