"I'll take you to the waiting-room," Hampson said, "and then I will go and get your ticket and some papers. I have told the porter who has your bag what train you are going by. And the guard will come and see if you want anything."
Joseph waited in the dingy, empty room while Hampson went away.
It was the ordinary bare, uncomfortable place with the hard leather seats, the colored advertisements of seaside resorts, and the long, heavy table shining with hideous yellow varnish.
Hampson seemed a long time, Joseph thought, though when he looked up at the clock over the mantel-shelf he saw that the journalist had only been gone about four minutes.
The waiting-room was absolutely silent save for the droning of a huge blue fly that was circling round and round in the long beam of dusty sunlight which poured in from one window.
The noise of the station outside seemed far away—a drowsy diapason.
Joseph, soothed by the distant murmur, leaned back in his chair and emptied his mind of thought.
Then his eye fell idly and carelessly upon an open book that lay upon the table.
The book was a copy of the Holy Bible, one of those large print books which a pious society presents to places of temporary sojourn, if perchance some passing may fall upon the Word of God and find comfort therein.
From where he sat, however, Joseph could not see what the book was.