"After a year in France—it will be a warm welcome——"
"A wet one, but I love the rain, and the red mud, every blooming inch of it."
"Of course you do. Just as I love the dust of the desert."
They spoke, each of them, with a sort of tense
calmness. One doesn't confess to a lump in one's throat.
The little man, Kemp, was brushing things in the aisle. He was hot but unconquered. Having laid out the belongings of the man he served, he took a sudden recess, and came back with a fresh collar, a wet but faultless pompadour, and a suspicion of powder on his small nose.
"All right, sir, we'll be there in fifteen minutes, sir," they heard him say, as he was swallowed up by the yawning door.
II
Fifteen minutes later when the train slowed up, there emerged from the drawing-room a man some years older than Randolph Paine, and many years younger than Major Prime. He was good-looking, well-dressed, but apparently in a very bad temper. Kemp, in an excited, Skye-terrier manner, had gotten the bags together, had a raincoat over his arm, had an umbrella handy, had apparently foreseen every contingency but one.
"Great guns, Kemp, why are we getting off here?"