Well, well, he'll have to get home somehow. His watch is only nickel and his cigarette case leather, but luckily that sort of thing doesn't weigh much with station-masters. What they want is a well- known name as a reference. Herbert is better off than I was: he can give them MY name. It will be idle for them to pretend that they have never heard of me.
THE DOCTOR
"May I look at my watch?" I asked my partner, breaking a silence which had lasted from the beginning of the waltz.
"Oh, HAVE you got a watch?" she drawled. "How exciting!"
"I wasn't going to show it to you," I said, "But I always think it looks so bad for a man to remove his arm from a lady's waist in order to look at his watch—I mean without some sort of apology or explanation. As though he were wondering if he could possibly stick another five minutes of it."
"Let me know when the apology is beginning," said Miss White. Perhaps, after all, her name wasn't White, but, anyhow, she was dressed in white, and it's her own fault if wrong impressions arise.
"It begins at once. I've got to catch a train home. There's one at 12.45, I believe. If I started now I could just miss it."
"You don't live in these Northern Heights then?"
"No. Do you?"
"Yes."