"Well, you are a delightful person! I know no one who can do such sensible, satisfactory things without preliminary fuss. Shall we take our seats?"
"I took the seats long ago—two nice window seats in a third-class carriage. Your friend the 'pepper-pot' has duly deposited my wraps in one, and my dressing-bag in the other, and is now mounting guard in case of accident. You have plenty of time to have a cup of coffee at Spiers & Pond's."
In a few minutes they seated themselves in the carriage, dismissed the "pepper-pot," and launched into earnest conversation. Not till the train was starting did Mona raise her eyes, and then they alighted on a friendly, familiar figure, At the extreme end of the platform stood the Sahib. All unaware that she was in the train, he was waving his hat to some one else, his fine muscular figure reducing all the other men on the platform, by force of contrast, to mere pigmies.
When Mona saw him it was too late even to bow, and she turned away from the window, her face flushed with disappointment.
"Oh, Doris," she said, "that was the Sahib!"
"And who," asked Doris, "may the Sahib be?"
"A Mr Dickinson. I saw a good deal of him in Norway this summer. He is a great friend of the Munros, you know. Such a good fellow! The sort of man whom all women instinctively look upon as a brother."
"The type is a rare one," said Doris coldly, "but I suppose it does exist."
The conversation had struck the vein of her cynicism now, though the men who knew "the lily maid" would have been much surprised to hear that such a vein existed, and, most of all, to hear that it lay just there.
"I don't think any of us can doubt that there is such a type," said Mona. "Certainly no one doubts it who has the privilege of knowing the Sahib."