CHAPTER III[ToC]
BRANDON COURT
"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?"
"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"
"Do you call it that too?" ...
... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you all my life!"—Rudyard Kipling, "The Brushwood Boy."
The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.
"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be there."
As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second reading of his admirably lucid instructions.
"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize him...."