We had some splendid games, and Gerald was still playing in an exciting match when I found that the Marriotts' train was nearly due. Of course he couldn't leave off, so I said that I would meet them and take them home; we only lived about a quarter of a mile from the station, and generally walked.
I couldn't find my racquet for some time, and consequently had a race with the train, which luckily ended in a dead heat, for I reached the platform just as it steamed in.
The few passengers quickly dispersed, but there was no sign of Jack; a tall, elderly man, wrapped in a thick overcoat, in spite of the hot evening, stood forlornly alone. I was just wondering if he could be Jack's father when he came up to me and said, "Are you Margaret?"
"Yes," I answered.
"I have often heard my boy speak of you," he said, looking extremely miserable.
Jack does not Come
"But isn't he coming?" I cried.
He replied "No" in such a hopeless voice and sighed so heavily that I was beginning to feel positively depressed, when he changed the subject by informing me that his bag had been left behind but was coming on by a later train, so, giving instructions for it to be sent up directly it arrived, I piloted him out of the station.
I had expected him to be eccentric, but he certainly was the oddest man I had ever met; he seemed perfectly obsessed by the loss of his bag, and would talk of nothing else, though I was longing to know why Jack hadn't come. The absence of his dress clothes seemed to worry him intensely. In vain I told him that we need not change for dinner; he said he must, and wouldn't be comforted.
"How is Jack?" I asked at last; "why didn't he come with you?"