"Oh no, I decided to stay after all. I found out that the trams go all night."
We walked in together.
"I won't be more autobiographical than I can help," I said, "but I must say it's a hard life, a doctor's. One is called away in the middle of a dance to a difficult case of—of mumps or something, and—well, there you are. A delightful evening spoilt. If one is lucky, one may get back in time for a waltz or two at the end.
"Indeed," I said, as we began to dance; "at one time to-night I quite thought I wasn't going to get back here at all."
THE THINGS THAT MATTER
RONALD, surveying the world from his taxi—that pleasant corner of the world, St James's Park—gave a sigh of happiness. The blue sky, the lawn of daffodils, the mist of green upon the trees were but a promise of the better things which the country held for him. Beautiful as he thought the daffodils, he found for the moment an even greater beauty in the Gladstone bags at his feet. His eyes wandered from one to the other, and his heart sang to him, "I'm going away—I'm going away—I'm going away."
The train was advertised to go at 2.22, and at 2.20 Ronald joined the Easter holiday crowd upon the platform. A porter put down his luggage and was then swallowed up in a sea of perambulators and flustered parents. Ronald never saw him again. At 2.40, amidst some applause, the train came in.
Ronald seized a lost porter.
"Just put these in for me," he said. "A first smoker."
"All this lot yours, sir?"