The husband is explaining, with English garrulity, all the station hearing, what an inconvenience it would have been had they gone in the Holbom Viaduct carriages.
“Half an hour's longer drive, you know, and it's very important we should get home in time; we are expected....”
For what? Dinner, most likely. What did it matter when they got home, to-day or next year? Yet he used to be angry if he were made late for dinner. They come into his compartment, and explain the situation at great length, while he pretends to listen.
A husband and wife returning from a month in Italy, full of their experiences: the Corniche Road, the palaces of Genoa, the pictures in the Pitti, St Peter's at Rome. Her first visit to the Continent, evidently; it reminded them of a certain tour round the Lakes in '80, and she withdrew her hand from her husband's as the train came out from the tunnel. They were not smart people—very pronounced middle-class—but they were lovers, after fifteen years.
They forgot him, who was staring on the bleak landscape with white, pinched face.
“How kind to take me this trip. I know how much you denied yourself, but it has made me young again,” and she said “Edward.” Were all these coincidences arranged? had his purgatorio begun already?
“Have you seen the Globe, sir? Bosworth, M.P. for Pedlington, has been made a judge, and there's to be a keen contest.
“Trevor, I see, is named as the Tory candidate—a clever fellow, I've heard. Do you know about him? he's got on quicker than any man of his years.
“Some say that it's his manner; he's such a good sort, the juries cannot resist him, a man told me—a kind heart goes for something even in a lawyer. Would you like to look....
“Very sorry; would you take a drop of brandy? No? The passage was a little rough, and you don't look quite up to the mark.”