PART I.
The Temple.
My dear Dorothy.—You do not often favour me with your correspondence, so that I was particularly pleased and flattered by the receipt of your letter asking for my opinion, as a rising barrister, on the following important legal points, which I will now proceed to deal with. As you have approached me without the intervention of a solicitor, it may possibly gratify you to know that I am not entitled to make any charge (even were I disposed to do so) for my professional opinions. This statement will, I am sure, remove a great weight from your mind; but a truce to jesting, now to business.
In your first question you ask me to decide whether you or Mr. Anstruther were right on the question of paying excess fares on your return from the Crystal Palace the other evening.
So far as the arguments adduced on either side are concerned, I can tell you frankly that you were both wrong; but let me have the facts of the case clearly stated before me. It appears that Aunt Anne, Robert and yourself went down last Wednesday to the Crystal Palace, where you met Miss Anstruther and her brother; and I have no doubt enjoyed yourselves immensely, wandering through those lovely grounds, gazing at the antediluvian monsters on the lakes or listening to the bands in the rosary or on the terrace.
In my opinion the Crystal Palace is just the place to spend a happy day. This, however, is a digression.
Instead of dining at the Palace, Aunt Anne invited the Anstruthers to return to town with you and to take their chance of getting—what I from personal experience can vouch for as certain to have been—an excellent impromptu meal.
On the return journey—we are getting to the point at last—the tickets were collected at Battersea Bridge, your tickets were returns to Victoria, but the Anstruthers had returns to Clapham Junction only, and accordingly Mr. Anstruther was invited to pay excess fare on them.
As a matter of fact the price for a return ticket from Victoria to the Palace is exactly the same as a return from Clapham Junction to the Palace, and such being the case, you considered that the collector had no right to demand an excess fare on Mr. Anstruther's tickets. You were wrong. Mr. Anstruther, you say, paid the excess on the ground that it was merely a concession on the part of the Company to those booking at Victoria to charge them the same fare as those booking at Clapham Junction; this may or may not be the case, it is beside the question.
The matter is entirely one of contract between yourself and the Railway Company. They contract to carry you for a certain sum to a certain place; in your case it was from Victoria to the Palace and back, and in the case of Mr. Anstruther and his sister from Clapham Junction to the Palace and back. On their return, therefore, to Clapham Junction, the contract between themselves and the Railway Company was completed, and on their remaining in the train and travelling up to Victoria a new contract was commenced between themselves and the Company. Mr. Anstruther was right, therefore, in paying the excess demanded, although his reason for doing so was not the right one.
To turn to quite another matter, I see that you want my advice on a point in connection with bicycles. So you also have not escaped the cycling craze of the day. Oh, Dorothy, after this I shall not be surprised to hear that you have taken to golf!
I am very sorry that you should have been annoyed by the insolence of the cabman; I am afraid our London jehus are not called "growlers" without reason, and some of them are only too ready to take advantage of ladies, when travelling without male escort, to insult them with impunity.
In offering the man twopence extra for carrying your bicycle on his cab, Aunt Anne was paying him not only more than he deserved, but more than he was legally entitled to demand.
It may appear to be very ridiculous to the unlegal mind, such as yours, my dear Dorothy, but it has been decided by the London magistrates that a bicycle is not luggage.
The result of this decision is that a cabman is not entitled to charge anything extra for carrying a bicycle on his cab, unless he has previously made an arrangement with his fare.
This piece of legal information you might bear in mind and make use of on a future occasion; if, therefore, a cabman ever behaves rudely towards you again when you are paying him extra for carrying your bicycle, just give him his correct fare, and if he is troublesome, take his number and send it to your legal adviser, or, in other words, to
Your affectionate cousin,
Bob Briefless.