'Well!' she said with splendid eyes. 'Aren't you still waiting for something to happen?'
'No. Not till next time. We've been let off,' Conroy answered, breathing as deeply as she.
'Then we ought to say our prayers.'
'What nonsense! Some one will see us.'
'We needn't kneel. Stand up and say "Our Father." We must!'
It was the first time since childhood that Conroy had prayed. They laughed hysterically when a curve threw them against an arm-rest.
'Now for breakfast!' she cried. 'My maid--Nurse Blaber--has the basket and things. It'll be ready in twenty minutes. Oh! Look at my hair!' and she went out laughing.
Conroy's first discovery, made without fumbling or counting letters on taps, was that the London and South Western's allowance of washing-water is inadequate. He used every drop, rioting in the cold tingle on neck and arms. To shave in a moving train balked him, but the next halt gave him a chance, which, to his own surprise, he took. As he stared at himself in the mirror he smiled and nodded. There were points about this person with the clear, if sunken, eye and the almost uncompressed mouth. But when he bore his bag back to his compartment, the weight of it on a limp arm humbled that new pride.
'My friend,' he said, half aloud, 'you go into training. You're putty.'
She met him in the spare compartment, where her maid had laid breakfast.