“I always do,” he replied. “Now then, if any one can give an imitation of George Robey, let him do it; if not, I’ll have a try to do the best I can. It’ll shorten the journey for you.”
They admitted his effort was not so bad, and two or three of his own age began to regard him enviously. Having regained command, he took care not to lose it again, and by the time the train stopped at its first junction he had secured an attentive audience; even the middle-aged man, on the train re-starting, asked how far he was going. The lad, with a glance out of the window, said he was not yet near his destination, but promised to give full warning when the time came near for them to endure the wrench of saying good-bye.
He conquered the middle-aged man, but appeared not satisfied with his victory, and, exercising the power of a tyrant, gave him a nick-name and invented a description of the domestic environments, insisting, in spite of the man’s assertion that he was a bachelor, on offering a lively account of the masterful behaviour of the man’s wife, her authority over him, his servile and penitent behaviour.
“A confounded young cad!” declared the other, heatedly, “that’s what you are. Most offensive specimen I ever encountered. Perfect curse to society.”
“Isn’t he a daisy?” asked the youth of the others. “Isn’t he a arum lily? Isn’t he a china ornament?”
“Leave him alone!” urged one of the others.
“Right you are,” he said, amiably. “I’ll give you a turn now.”
The compartment was becoming restive under his sniping, when some one caught the name of a station as the train flew past, and the lad, saying, “I didn’t know we were so near,” rose and took his bag from the rack. Letting the window down and resting his chin there, he inhaled the country air, and announced, with a change of tone, identification of certain houses and meadows. That was the place where he once knocked up thirty-eight, after making a duck’s-egg in the first innings; here was the very finest wood for nutting in the whole neighbourhood; over there, if you only went late enough and not too late, you could pick more blackberries than you cared to carry away. He begged them all to rise to catch sight of the spire of a church; they had to jump up again to see the thatched roof of a farm where lived, he declared, three of the best cousins in the whole world. He packed his cap in the bag, put on a bowler, and threw away the end of his cigarette.
“Hope I haven’t been talking too much,” he said, apologetically, “and I trust no offence has been taken where none was intended. Just look at that clump of trees over there, and notice the colours they’ve got; aren’t they simply wonderful? What were you going to say, sir?”
The middle-aged man hazarded the opinion that Nature knew something.