“My good girl, Sherlock Holmes was nothing to you.”
“Thanks, so much! I believe he is a King’s messenger.”
“Inference again, I suppose?”
“Well, he seems to have something on his mind. I can’t quite decide whether he’s in charge of something very precious, or whether he has lived so much among enemies that he’s got into the habit of being always on the alert for an attack.”
“It’s just as well you are a little modest, for I’m pretty certain that a King’s messenger wears a badge of some sort, and lugs a despatch-box about with him.”
“Oh, Maurice, you are dense! Of course he is on very special service, and has been warned not to exhibit anything that would reveal his identity.”
“And he is so clever in concealing it that he lets himself be spotted by the first girl he runs across who’s been reading detective stories! Tell you what, I’ll make up to him and break his self-betrayal to him gently. He really ought to know.”
“Oh no, don’t ask him outright what he is! It’s so much more interesting to think of him as a King’s messenger than as somebody’s nephew on his way to spend part of his leave at Czarigrad. He doesn’t look important enough for a military attaché.”
“Look here, Zoe, you really must curb your unbridled imagination. You’ll have the whole train peopled with mysterious personalities in no time. By the bye,” with elaborate carelessness, “what do you make of our namesakes?”
“Mrs Smith may possibly have married an Englishman,” meditatively, “but her name is the only English thing about her. As for the girl, her name is no more Smith than——”