“Why here, where we are standing,” he snapped out. “Where do you think ‘here’ is—over there?” He seemed irritable.
“I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that is what you mean,” I replied. I spoke with studied politeness; my idea was to rebuke his rudeness.
“I mean,” he answered, “are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute ago?”
“I am not that man,” I said; “good-night.”
“Are you sure?” he persisted.
“One is not likely to forget talking to you,” I retorted.
His tone had been most offensive. “I beg your pardon,” he replied grudgingly. “I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute or so ago.”
I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had a quarter of an hour to wait. “No, it certainly wasn’t me,” I returned genially, but ungrammatically. “Why, did you want him?”
“Yes, I did,” he answered. “I put a penny in the slot here,” he continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: “wanted a box of matches. I couldn’t get anything put, and I was shaking the machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man, about your size, and—you’re sure it wasn’t you?”
“Positive,” I again ungrammatically replied; “I would tell you if it had been. What did he do?”