Hephzy nodded. “Just exactly,” she said. “Everything looks like the pictures. I feel as if I'd seen it all before. If that engine didn't toot so much like a tin whistle I should almost think it was a picture. But it isn't—it isn't; it's real, and you and I are part of it.”
We dined on the train. Night came and our window-pictures changed to glimpses of flashing lights interspersed with shadowy blotches of darkness. At length the lights became more and more frequent and began to string out in long lines marking suburban streets. Then the little locomotive tooted its tin whistle frantically and we rolled slowly under a great train shed—Paddington Station and London itself.
Amid the crowd on the platform Hephzy and I stood, two lone wanderers not exactly sure what we should do next. About us the busy crowd jostled and pushed. Relatives met relatives and fathers and mothers met sons and daughters returning home after long separations. No one met us, no one was interested in us at all, except the porters and the cabmen. I selected a red-faced chunky porter who was a decidedly able person, apparently capable of managing anything except the letter h. The acrobatics which he performed with that defenceless consonant were marvelous. I have said that I selected him; that he selected me would be nearer the truth.
“Cab, sir. Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” he said. “Leave that to me, sir. Will you 'ave a fourwheeler or a hordinary cab, sir?”
I wasn't exactly certain what a fourwheeler might be. I had read about them often enough, but I had never seen one pictured and properly labeled. For the matter of that, all the vehicles in sight appeared to have four wheels. So I said, at a venture, that I thought an ordinary cab would do.
“Yes, sir; 'ere you are, sir. Your boxes are in the luggage van, I suppose, sir.”
I took it for granted he meant my trunks and those were in what I, in my ignorance, would have called a baggage car:
“Yes, sir,” said the porter. “If the lidy will be good enough to wait 'ere, sir, you and I will go hafter the boxes, sir.”
Cautioning Hephzy not to stir from her moorings on any account I followed my guide to the “luggage van.” This crowded car disgorged our two steamer trunks and, my particular porter having corraled a fellow-craftsman to help him, the trunks were dragged to the waiting cab.
I found Hephzy waiting, outwardly calm, but inwardly excited.