'Oh, dear! And Salome!—what will she say?'
'Salome?'
'Yes—my sister, my twin-sister.'
When Philip Pennycomequick did finally reach his destination, it was with a mind that prejudged Salome, and was prejudiced against her.
CHAPTER IX.
ARRIVAL.
'What—no cabs? No cabs?' asked Philip Pennycomequick, on reaching the Mergatroyd Station. 'What a place this must be to call itself a town and have no convenience for those who arrive at it, to transport them to their destinations. Can one hire a wheelbarrow?' Philip was, as may be seen, testy. The train had not deposited him at the station till past seven, instead of four-eighteen, when due. He had been thrown into involuntary association with a young lady, whom he had set down to belong to a category of females that are to be kept at a distance—that is, those who, as he contemptuously described them, run after a hearth-brush because it wears whiskers. He misjudged Janet Baynes, as men of a suspicious temper are liable to misjudge simple and frank natures. There are men who, the more forward a woman is, so much the more do they recoil into their shells, to glower out of them at those who approach them, like a mastiff from its kennel, with a growl and a display of teeth.
Who this woman was with whom he had been thrown, Philip only knew from what she had told him and the guard. He was aware that she was the sister of his correspondent Salome, but he was ignorant as before who Salome was, less only the fact that she must be young, because the twin-sister of his fellow-passenger. If like her—and twins are usually alike—she must be pretty, and as mental characteristics follow the features, like her coquettish, and ready to make love—as Philip put it—to the hearth-brush because of its whiskers.
At the station he had reckoned on finding a cab and driving to his destination, whilst his companion went off in another. But to his vexation he found that there were no cabs. He must engage a porter to carry his traps on a truck. He resolved to go first of all to his uncle's house and inquire whether he was lost in the flood and if he had been heard of since the telegram was despatched. Then he would put up for the night at the inn, and his future movements would be regulated by the information he received.
'By the way,' said he to the porter, 'I suppose you have a decent hotel in the place, though it is deficient in cabs.'