Sir John's hand was over his lips as he walked back to the carriage, casting as it were the commander's eye over the field.
“When the crowd is round the train you come and look for me,” he said to the footman, who touched his cockaded hat in silence.
At that moment the train lumbered in, the engine wearing that inanely self-important air affected by locomotives of the larger build. From all quarters an army of porters besieged the platform, and in a few seconds Sir John was in the centre of an agitated crowd. There was one other calm man on that platform—another man with no parcels, whom no one sought to embrace. His brown face and close-cropped head towered above a sea of agitated bonnets. Sir John, whose walk in life had been through crowds, elbowed his way forward and deliberately walked against Guy Oscard.
“D—n it!” he exclaimed, turning round. “Ah—Mr. Oscard—how d'ye do?”
“How are you?” replied Guy Oscard, really glad to see him.
“You are a good man for a crowd; I think I will follow in your wake,” said Sir John. “A number of people—of the baser sort. Got my carriage here somewhere. Fool of a man looking for me in the wrong place, no doubt. Where are you going? May I offer you a lift? This way. Here, John, take Mr. Oscard's parcels.”
He could not have done it better in his keenest day. Guy Oscard was seated in the huge, roomy carriage before he had realised what had happened to him.
“Your man will look after your traps, I suppose?” said Sir John, hospitably drawing the fur rug from the opposite seat.
“Yes,” replied Guy, “although he is not my man. He is Jack's man, Joseph.”
“Ah, of course; excellent servant, too. Jack told me he had left him with you.”