"Bless us!" he said, as the express flashed through Preston without stopping. "It's fust time as I've begun a bottle o' Bass in one town and finished it in another."
He grew positively jolly, and the journey seemed to be accomplished with the rapidity of a dream.
CHAPTER XIX
THE TOSSING
"You said you'd seen it into the van," pouted Helen—she who never pouted!
"Nay, lass," he corrected her, "I said I'd seen 'em bringing all th' luggage over."
The inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived. They stood together on the platform of St. Enoch's, Glasgow. The last pieces of luggage were being removed from the guard's van under the direction of passengers, and there was no sign whatever of Helen's trunks. This absence of Helen's trunks did not in the least surprise James Ollerenshaw; he was perfectly aware that Helen's trunks reposed, at that self-same instant, in the lost luggage office at Crewe; but, of course, he had to act surprise. In case of necessity he could act very well. It was more difficult for him to act sorrow than to act surprise; but he did both to his own satisfaction. He climbed into the van and scanned its corners—in vain. Then, side by side, they visited the other van at the head of the train, with an equal result.
The two guards, being Scotch, responded to inquiries with extreme caution. All that they would answer for was that the trunks were not in the train. Then the train was drawn out of the station by a toy-engine, and the express engine followed it with grave dignity, and Helen and Jimmy were left staring at the empty rails.