“After all,” said the older man, musing as he confessed to a point of no more than five, “it’s all in the day’s work.... It’s just a day’s work,” he repeated with a saddened look in his eyes, “it’s a game that one plays like this game, and then when it’s over it’s over. It’s the little losses that count.”
That game again was unfortunate for the young man, and he had to shell out fifteen and six. But the brakes were applied, Bristol was reached, the train came to a standstill, and the young man, looking up a little confused and hurried, said: “Hello, Bristol! I get out here.”
“So do I,” said the older man. They both stood up together, and the jolt of the train as it stopped dead threw them into each other’s arms.
“I am really very sorry,” said the youth.
“It’s my fault,” said the old chap like a good fellow, “I ought to have caught hold. You get out and I’ll hand you your bag.”
“It’s very kind of you,” said the young man. He was really flattered by so much attention, but he knew himself what a good companion he was and he could understand it; besides which they had made friends during that little journey. He always liked a man to whom he had lost some money in an honest game.
There was a heavy crowd upon the platform, and two men barging up out of it saluted the old man boisterously by the name of Jack. He twinkled at them with his eyes as he began moving the luggage about, and stood for a moment in the doorway with his own bag in his right hand and the young man’s bag in his left. The young man so saw it for an instant, a fine upstanding figure—he saw his bag handed by some mistake to the second of the old man’s friends, a porter came by at the moment pushing through the crowd with a trolley, an old lady made a scene, the porter apologized, the crowd took sides, some for the porter, some for the old lady; the young man, with the deference of his age, politely asked several people to make way, but when he had emerged from the struggle his companion, his companion’s friends, and his own bag could not be found; or at any rate he could not make out where they were in the great mass that pushed and surged upon the platform.
He made himself a little conspicuous by asking too many questions and by losing his temper twice with people who had done him no harm, when, just as his excitement was growing more than querulous, a very heavy, stupid-looking man in regulation boots tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Follow me.” He was prepared with an oath by way of reply, but another gentleman of equal weight, wearing boots of the same pattern, linked his arm in his and between them they marched him away, to a little private closet opening out of the stationmaster’s room.
“Now, sir,” said he who had first tapped him on the shoulder, “be good enough to explain your movements.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the young man.