‘You mustn’t tell anybody,’ he said. ‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes,’ said David.
‘Well, if I have my own face at the back of my head, it will be such a puzzle. People in the street will see me looking at them, as if I was coming towards them, and all the time I shall be going away. What do you think of that?’
‘It’s—it’s certainly very puzzling,’ said David.
‘Isn’t it? And then when I’m tired of going that way, I shall begin to walk backwards, and all the people the other side of me will think the same thing. In quite a short time nobody will know where I am. I shall always be going away when they think I’m coming, and when they think I’m coming I shall always be going away!’
‘But that’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ asked David.
He took no notice of this, and called out to the painter, who had R.A. embroidered on his collar.
‘Mind you put a cigarette in my mouth. And then this side will smoke a pipe. That’ll puzzle them worse than ever. It will, it will—won’t it?’ he said to David triumphantly.
The bald-headed men in the hairdresser’s
get up to catch the train