“Let’s see,” said he; “I’ll get to his desk at seven. He’ll be hard at work, and, if he engages me, he may send me out on an assignment at once. Glad I missed the other trains.”
Thus was Thomas wont to soliloquize. At one o’clock he went to Conley’s Inn, and sat down to one of those dinners that attract drummers to a hotel. Necessarily, then, it was a good dinner, and one over which he lingered until nearly two. Then he went into the office and sat down.
The room was warm, and his dinner had made him drowsy. He decided to take a little nap. He had the faculty of waking when he pleased, and he willed to do so at fifteen minutes past two. It would be weakness for him to get to the station with too much time to spare, but this would give him a quarter-hour in which to go a half-mile.
His awakening faculty would seem to have been slightly out of order that day, however, and he did not arouse until twenty-nine minutes past two by the hotel clock.
Of course he did not make a fool of himself by trying to do a half-mile in sixty seconds; but he walked leisurely toward the station, intending to get his ticket and have that off his mind.
He laughed heartily at a corpulent fellow who darted by him, carrying a grip.
His laughter ceased, however, when, on turning the corner, he discerned the aforesaid fat man in the act of being assisted on to the platform of the last car by the brakeman, the train having acquired considerable momentum. Then he saw it disappear around a curve which was part of the road at that point. There were three explanations possible: either the train was behind time, or else his awakening faculty was in good repair, or the hotel clock was fourteen minutes fast. The latter proved to be the correct explanation of the somewhat vexing occurrence.
“Say, that’s a bad habit you have of missing trains,” said his friend the baggageman. “Goin’ to miss another—or do anything else?”