They paced the platform, waiting for the train.
Alf babbled at large, his brother paying little heed.
"Be the making of you!" Alf was saying in his rather patronizing way. "See the world!—knock about!—come home a full-blown Hammer-man with a fat pension and a V.C. on your chest and a Colonel's commission! And we'll all meet you at the stytion with a brass band playing See the Conquering Hero Comes! and be proud of you. I'd come along meself for company, only I'm too small."
Ern roused from his dreams.
"What will you do then?" he asked, faintly ironical.
"Me?" cried Alf, starting off on his favourite topic. "I ain't a-goin to stop in Beachbourne all me life, you lay. When I'm through me apprentice they may send me to the River Plate. Got a big branch there. England's used up. There's chances in a new country for a chap that means to get on."
Ern installed himself in a smoking carriage.
"O, reservoir," said Alf, facetious to the end.
"See ye again some day," answered Ern, puffing away and exhibiting a man-of-the-world-like stoicism he did not feel.
He took off his Trilby hat, unbuttoned the overcoat with the velvet collar, and opened his orange-coloured Answers.