Happy Meetings.
It was to the same railway station as that at which they had parted from their guardian and been handed over to Mr Merryboy years before that Bobby Frog now drove. The train was not due for half an hour.
“Tim,” said Bob after they had walked up and down the platform for about five minutes, “how slowly time seems to fly when one’s in a hurry!”
“Doesn’t it?” assented Tim, “crawls like a snail.”
“Tim,” said Bob, after ten minutes had elapsed, “what a difficult thing it is to wait patiently when one’s anxious!”
“Isn’t it!” assented Tim, “so hard to keep from fretting and stamping.”
“Tim,” said Bob, after twenty minutes had passed, “I wonder if the two or three dozen people on this platform are all as uncomfortably impatient as I am.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Tim, “but certainly possessed of more power to restrain themselves.”
“Tim,” said Bob, after the lapse of five-and-twenty minutes, “did you ever hear of such a long half-hour since you were born?”
“Never,” replied the sympathetic Tim, “except once long ago when I was starving, and stood for about that length of time in front of a confectioner’s window till I nearly collapsed and had to run away at last for fear I should smash in the glass and feed.”