Waffles leant from the window and beckoned frantically. When the official came up, he commenced to jabber in invented gibberish, desperately gesticulating with his hands.
“Don’t understand you,” the official said tartly; “don’t talk no foreign langwidge.”
Waffles paused in his torrent of palaver and winked solemnly at a group of undergraduates who stood watching. They happened to be pupils of the Professor. Then, as though an inspiration had burst upon him, he inquired, “Parlez-vous FranÃÆçais?”
“Nong. I do not,” snapped the station-master, annoyed that his lack of scholarship should be exposed in this manner.
He was moving away, when Waffles produced his crowning witticism, to which all the rest had been preface. Jehane would certainly laugh now. “Hi! Station-master! Does this train go to Oxford?”
He had one glimpse of the insulted official’s countenance, then he felt himself grabbed by the arm and drawn violently back into the carriage.
“Do you want to make me ashamed of you already. Sit down and behave yourself.”
“But darling—”
“Oh, be quiet. Aren’t you ever solemn? Is nothing sacred?”
Exceedingly puzzled and utterly extinguished, he did as he was bade, waiting like a small boy expecting to be spanked.