“Oh! where can he be? We shall start without him!” exclaimed Alice in dismay.
“I’ll go and look for him,” rejoined Lord Alfred, good-naturedly.
“If you would be so very kind,” returned Alice, her lovely eyes sparkling with gratitude.
“Better not, sir; only lose your own place, without finding the gent—train’s agoin’ to start. I must shut the door,” grumbled a cynical porter.
“Pray keep it open till the last moment!” exclaimed Alice, drawing out her purse, while Lord Alfred, disregarding the porter’s advice, dashed off on his mission.
“Am I allowed to give you anything?” continued Alice, timidly, as a vague suspicion of the illegality of bribing railway porters flashed across her.
The man looked up and down the platform, and perceiving no informer near, did not commit himself by words, but partially closing the door, so as to conceal the action, held out his hand, with the palm turned suggestively upwards. As his fingers closed over the half-crown which Alice, with a strong idea that she was committing an indictable offence, placed within his grasp, an angry and imperative voice called out, “Now then, shut that door there!” and in spite of Alice’s remonstrances, the porter was about to obey, when, breathless with running, Lord Alfred sprang into the carriage, the door was slammed to, a bell rang furiously, the dragon gave a short, pert scream of delight at getting its head, and the train started. Unheeding, in fact scarcely hearing Lord Alfred’s mild remonstrance that he believed it was reckoned dangerous to put one’s head out of the window of a railway carriage, Alice immediately committed that folly, and was rewarded for her imprudence by seeing, just as the train was getting to its full speed, Harry rush distractedly on to the platform, shake his fist at the retreating carriages, and then, watch in hand, stride up to the station-master, and evidently afford him a specimen of his quiet manner. With a feeling half way between an inclination to laugh and a disposition to cry, Alice resumed her seat, and, under pretence of arranging her veil, took a glance round the carriage. Her only companion, besides Lord Alfred Courtland, was a species of prize old gentleman, who having spent his life hitherto in growing as fat as the nature of the case admitted, was evidently resolved to guard against the possibility of his shadow becoming less, by devoting the remainder of his existence to the duties of eating, drinking, and sleeping, which latter accomplishment he was then displaying to the admiration of all lovers of that science of which honest Sancho Panza so fervently blessed the inventor. Having mentally summed him up in the definition “wretched old thing,” Alice next took a survey of her new friend, and decided that he had such a good, innocent, child-like expression of countenance, that young and handsome as he was, she would not have minded even if the “wretched old thing” had not been present to play chaperone in dumb show.
“How very provoking for Mr. Coverdale to lose the train, and all through his good-nature, too,” began Lord Alfred; “I saw the affair as well as he did, but it would never have occurred to me to interfere.”
“Nor to any one else except Mr. Coverdale,” returned Alice, scornfully; “his devotion to horses and dogs is quite exemplary.”
“As a pattern or as a warning?” inquired Lord Alfred, favouring her with a look of intelligence for which she was scarcely prepared.