CHAPTER XLIV.—ON THE SHORTCOMINGS OF A SYSTEM.
HAROLD was out of the compartment in a moment. Did the guard mean that the train had actually left for Abbeylands? It had left six minutes before, the guard explained, and the station-master added his guarantee to the statement.
Harold looked around—from platform to platform—as if he fancied that there was a conspiracy between the officials to conceal the train.
How could the train leave without taking all its carriages with it?
It did nothing of the kind, the station-master said, firmly but respectfully.
The guard went on with his business of cutting neat triangles out of the tickets of the passengers in the carriages that were alongside the platform—passengers bound for Ashmead.
“But I—we—my—my wife and I got into one of the carriages of the Abbeylands train,” said Harold, becoming indignant, after the fashion of his countrymen, when they have made a mistake either on a home or foreign railway. “What sort of management is it that allows one portion of a train to go in one direction and another part in another direction?”
“It’s our system, sir,” said the official. “You see, sir, there’re never many passengers for either the Abbeyl’n’s”—being a station-master he did not do an unreasonable amount of clipping in regard to the names—“or the Ashm’d branch, so the Staplehurst train is divided—only we don’t light the lamps in the Ashm’d portion until we’re ready to start it. Did you get into a carriage that had a lamp, sir?”