Then he laughed harshly. “My father and mother came from Cromarty,” he said with apparent irrelevance.
“That’s the Highlands,” said the Professor.
“Ay,” said McCurdie.
Lord Boyne said nothing, but tugged at his mustache and looked out of the window as the frozen meadows and bits of river and willows raced past. A dead silence fell on them. McCurdie broke it with another laugh and took a whisky flask from his handbag.
“Have a nip?”
“Thanks, no,” said the Professor. “I have to keep to a strict dietary, and I only drink hot milk and water—and of that sparingly. I have some in a thermos bottle.”
Lord Boyne also declining the whisky, McCurdie swallowed a dram and declared himself to be better. The professor took from his bag a foreign review in which a German sciolist had dared to question his interpretation of a Hittite inscription. Over the man’s ineptitude he fell asleep and snored loudly.
To escape from his immediate neighborhood McCurdie went to the other end of the seat and faced Lord Boyne, who had resumed his gold glasses and his listless contemplation of obscure actresses. McCurdie lit a pipe, Boyne another black cigar. The train thundered on.
Presently they all lunched together in the restaurant car. The windows steamed, but here and there through a wiped patch of pane a white world was revealed. The snow was falling. As they passed through Westbury, McCurdie looked mechanically for the famous white horse carved into the chalk of the down; but it was not visible beneath the thick covering of snow.
“It’ll be just like this all the way to Gehenna—Trehenna, I mean,” said McCurdie.