"Cracked heads, I fancy. I'll never forget the sight it was; all you could see of 'em was the three shiny top hats, stove in."
The lights were flickering in the station only the great yellow clock-face shone unchangeable, with its minute hand creeping up. Down below on the platforms scurrying passengers went their ways, gathering in thickening groups and eddying here and there round a pile of luggage. Everywhere there was restlessness.
Susan leant back in her corner. Their end of the platform was a little dim, and it was less frequented. She noticed a woman's figure passing along the train.
Barnaby was loitering, half in, half out of the door, absorbed in chatter. They were asking him if he were coming out with the Quorn, offering to lend him a crock to-morrow; relating the current news about men and horses. Once the big man turned his head casually as the figure that Susan had noticed passed. His mouth shaped itself in a whistle, but he made no remark. Only his broad back seemed to block out a little more of the view.
"It's about time we started," he said.
"What's the matter down there?" asked Barnaby.
"Oh, I fancied I saw a customer," he said promptly. "Did you take your wife to the grasping Mélisande? You might have patronized another old friend in me. There's a hat in the window I trimmed myself."
"What?" said Barnaby.
The big man chuckled heavily.
"You didn't know I'd gone in for millinery?" he said. "If you had had your eyes about you you'd have seen my establishment. There's a business that women never will understand! They haven't got bold ideas; they are too fond of twisting. It was an accident, really. I was financing an aunt of mine, Clara Lady Kilgour,—and the thing was going bankrupt. I strolled into the shop one morning and found Clara weeping, and the Frenchy who had lured her into it sniffing like a noxious weed in a bed of artificial roses. Just by way of cheering her up a bit, I snatched up an affair the serpent was working at—a muddle of feathers and scraps of lace.—'You'll ruin that!' they wailed. But hey, presto! I had found my vocation. I kicked out the bailiffs and took it over. And now I am running it as 'The Earl of Kilgour, late Fleur-de-lis.'"