Beatrice looked at him coldly.
"That's a way to talk of your daughter," she said in scorn.
"Don't kill him," I begged, "We may want him. Now I've got another idea. If you look out of the window you observe that we are on a SINGLE line."
"Well, I envy it. And, however single it is, we're going away from home in it."
"True. But the point is that no train can come back on it until we've stopped going forward. So, you see, there's no object in getting out of this train until it has finished for the day. Probably it will go back itself before long, out of sheer boredom. And it's much better waiting here than on a draughty Byres platform."
Beatrice, quite seeing the point, changed the subject.
"There's my trunk will go on to Brookfield, and the wagonette will meet the train, and as we aren't there it will go away without the trunk, and all baby's things are in it."
"She's not complaining," I said. "She's just mentioning it."
"Look here," said John reproachfully, "we're doing all we can. We're both thinking like anything." He picked up his paper again.
I was beginning to get annoyed. It was, of course, no good to get as anxious and excited as Beatrice; that wouldn't help matters at all. On the other hand, the entire indifference of John and the baby was equally out of place. It seemed to me that there was a middle and Napoleonic path in between these two extremes which only I was following. To be convinced that one is the only person doing the right thing is always annoying.