“Great Scott! What do you think of that for a zoological specimen, Phil?” said Fordham, as the train steamed slowly away from the platform where their late fellow-passengers still stood bustling around a pile of boxes and bundles. “The harridan deliberately and of her own free will gets into a tobacco cart—out of sheer cussedness, in fact, for there stands the non-smoker stark empty—and then has the unparalleled face to try and boss us out of it. And there are idiots with whom she would have succeeded too.”
“Well, you know, it’s beastly awkward when a woman keeps on swearing she can’t stand smoke, even though you know she has no business there. What the deuce are you to do?”
“Politely ask her to step into the next compartment, whose door stands yearningly open to receive her. Even the parson had wit enough to see that.”
“Yes, that’s so. But, I say, what an infernally slow train this is?”
“This little incident,” went on Fordham, “which has served to break the monotony of our journey, reminds me of a somewhat similar joke which occurred last year on my way back to England. We fetched Pontarlier pretty late at night, and of course had to turn out and undergo the Customs ordeal. Well, I was sharp about the business, and got back into my carriage and old corner first. It was an ordinary compartment—five a side—not like this. Almost immediately after in comes a large and assertive female with an eighteen-year-old son, a weedy, unlicked cub as ever you saw in your life, and both calmly took the other end seats. Now I knew that one of these seats belonged to a Frenchman who was going through, so sat snug in my corner waiting to enjoy the fun. It came in the shape of the Frenchman. Would madame be so kind, but—the seat was his? No, madame would not be so kind—not if she knew it. Possibly if madame had been young and pretty the outraged Gaul might have subsided more gracefully, for subside he had to—but her aggressiveness about equalled her unattractiveness, which is saying much. So a wordy war ensued, in the course of which the door was banged and the deposed traveller shot with more vehemence than grace half-way across the compartment, and the train started. He was mad, I can tell you. Instead of his snug corner for the night, there the poor devil was, propped up on end, lurching over every time he began to nod.
“Well, we’d finished our feed—we’d got a chicken and some first-rate Burgundy on board—and were looking forward to a comfortable smoke. In fact, we’d each got a cigar in our teeth, and the chap who was with me—whom we’ll call Smith—was in the act of lighting up, when—
“‘I object to smoke. This isn’t a smoking-carriage, and I won’t have it.’
“We looked at the aggressive female, then at each other. Her right was unassailable. It was not a tobacco cart, but on French lines they are not generally too particular. Still, in the face of that protest we were floored.
“Smith was awfully mad. He cursed like a trooper under his breath—swore he’d be even with the harridan yet—and I believed him.
“Some twenty minutes went by in this way, Smith licking his unlit cigar and cursing roundly to himself. Presently she beckoned him over. He had half a mind not to go; however, he went.