After dinner they sat and smoked awhile. The Lonely One knew much of the life-history of the other by now. It had burst from the boy, and the Lonely One had listened sympathetically and with little comment, and had liked to hear it. It is good to hear a boy talk about his mother.
“What shall we do now?”
“We might go to the cinema show; it used to be fairly good.”
“Right-oh! I say”—a little diffidently—“last time I was on leave, the first time too, I came back with some fellows who were pretty—well—pretty hot stuff. They wanted me to go to a—to a place up in the town, and I didn’t go. I think they thought I was an awful blighter, don’t-you-know, but——”
“What that kind of chap thinks doesn’t matter in the least, old man,” interposed the other. “You were at Cambridge, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you may have heard the old tag? Besides, I don’t think—some one—somebody ...” he hesitated and stopped. The youngster flushed.
“Yes, I know,” he said softly.
They boarded the train together, and shared the discomforts of the long tedious journey. Every hour, or less, the train stopped, for many minutes, and then with a creak and a groan wandered on again like an ancient snail. Rain beat on the window-panes, and the compartment was as drafty as a sieve.
It was not until the small hours that they reached their destination, a cold, bleak, storm-swept platform.