‘Why should I have two?’ said David. ‘It’s only me.’
‘One taxi goes ten miles an hour, and two go twenty,’ said she. ‘And ten go a hundred, and a hundred go a thousand. Say what you can afford, and you can catch any train up, no matter how far it has gone.’
David had not really meant to go away by train at all, but somehow it seemed all settled for him, and instantly all the happy families began blowing on things, with piercing shrieks, to summon his taxi, or the hundred taxis, or however many they thought good for him. Miss Bones picked up her sirloin, and blew that, Mr. Chip the carpenter blew on his gimlet, Mrs. Dose blew her bottle, and Miss Bun her bun. Never since the flame-cats had mewed and squealed to accompany their dances, had David heard such a deafening noise. Quantities of steam appeared to come out of their instruments also, and soon the whole room was filled with it and whistlings. Then the steam began to clear again a little, though the whistling got no less, and whether or no David had come in a taxi, he had certainly arrived at a station.
CHAPTER V
There were huge piles of luggage all round David, as he saw when the steam cleared away a little. There were trunks, portmanteaux, dress-baskets, lunch-baskets, tea-baskets, gun-cases, golf-clubs, gladstone-bags, carpet-bags, despatch-cases, hat-boxes, collection-boxes, band-boxes, hampers, milk-cans, hold-alls, fish-baskets, safes, unsafes (the sort that fly open as you are getting into the train), Christmas boxes, rug-straps, and a sort of palisade of umbrellas and sticks on the top. All of them had green printed labels on, and wherever he turned, he saw that the labels were
David Blaize, Esq.,
Passenger to Anywhere.
‘That’s no earthly use at all,’ thought David. ‘It doesn’t tell me where I’m going. And how did I get so much luggage?’
