To see the true British female, untrammelled by etiquette, one only needs to view her in full career along a platform, charging the wrong train. Restraint at such a moment vanishes, and aristocratic repose is nowhere. Sometimes the true British male condescends to show his undisguised self in a like manner; at least, so far as flurry and flying coat-tails are concerned; but more commonly his rôle is the dignified punctuality, which has not five seconds to spare, yet which never expects anything so preposterous as that he should be left behind.
Jean overtook Madame Collier, close to the train.
"Don't get in, aunt. This is not yours."
"Not for Folkestone! You are sure?" Madame Collier released the door-handle with a gasp of relief. Her short skirts were tucked up, as if for the wading of a Dulveriford marsh; and her poke bonnet was crooked with mental agitation. Jean gently pulled the bonnet straight, and led Madame Collier again to the forsaken heap of packages.
"I almost wish we had arranged to go with you as far as Folkestone."
"What for? Nonsense, Jean? Mere waste of money. I hate travelling, but I know how to manage. I'm not a minikin finikin creature, like Sybella Devereux, afraid to put my nose inside a train without somebody to back me up. That's not my sort!" She certainly did not look minikin or finikin, seated on a small hamper, with her strongly-outlined face and vigorous personality.
"But you don't like going alone."
"Who said I did? Doing a thing doesn't mean liking it, nine times in ten, with people who are worth anything. It only means not being beaten. I don't like going to France at all, if you come to that. People, are not born into the world just to do what they like," declared Madame Collier, mopping her countenance with a handkerchief of large and substantial make. She disdained what she called "those flibbertigibbet squares," patronised by modern ladies. "It's pretty much the other way commonly, if one's got any stuff in one. I hate Paris—great frivolous place—and that's exactly why I have to live there. If I wanted to go, I shouldn't be allowed."
"Is one never allowed to do what one wishes?" asked Jean.
The doctrine was not new to her, but it sounded dismal.