“Why on earth didn’t you get out?” I asked, somewhat angrily I am afraid, as I hustled the pair of them on to the platform just as the train was starting.
“But this isn’t Vienna,” replied my wife, with a pretty air of perplexity. “It’s Wien. Look, there’s the name on that big board over there.”
Then I understood. The Austrians spell the name of their capital city that way, i.e. Wien, and not as we spell it—Vienna. The mistake was therefore a quite excusable one on the part of an English girl who had never set foot in Austria before. Nevertheless it was lucky for both of us that I happened to enter her compartment just when I did, for the train she was travelling by was the Trans-Continental Express, and the next stop after quitting Vienna was some three hundred miles down the line towards Constantinople.
By the way, I cannot recommend Vienna as a place of residence for married men who habitually stay out late at night, and who are not over wishful to let their better halves know what hour they return home. And for this reason. A householder in Vienna, or even the occupier of a suite of rooms, or a flat, who is out after eleven o’clock at night, has to put two coins, value about twopence of our money, in a sort of automatic penny-in-the-slot contrivance which is affixed to all the doors in order to obtain admission to his own domicile. And, furthermore, the beastly little tell-tale machine actually registers the time of your arrival.
Soon after my return to England, while I was playing at a certain northern town, I was invited by the Chief Constable to go for a day’s rabbit shooting on a big estate some few miles out.
There were about a dozen guns altogether. We motored to the place, and before starting the Chief Constable addressed us somewhat as follows:
“Now, gentlemen, mind this is a rabbit shoot. No pheasants are to be killed under any pretence whatever. Remember, all of you! it’s the close season and it’s a very great privilege we have been accorded, and it must not be abused.”
Of course we all promised to remember, and the shoot commenced. I was given a place on the extreme outside of the covert, where I was hidden from the remainder of the party by the thick undergrowth.
Presently I found myself within a few yards of the Chief Constable. I could see him quite plainly, but he could not see me.
There were lots of pheasants about, and soon I saw the Chief peer cautiously round to see if anybody was looking; then he let drive at a fine cock bird, which he picked up and put in the inside pocket of his shooting jacket.