“You don’t know how much I feel all this.”
“There, you must be tired. We are going to take the boy to-night.”
Miss Carmagee’s stout figure seemed to stand like a breakwater between Catherine and the world, and there was an all-sufficing courage on her face.
People were staring; Murchison became aware of it as they moved towards the booking-office. Several familiar faces seemed to start up vividly out of the past. He noticed two porters grinning and talking together beside a pile of luggage near the bridge, and his sensitive pride concluded that they were making him their mark. The ticket collector was a thin, gray-headed man whom Murchison had known for years. He found himself conjecturing, as one conjectures over trifles at such a pass, whether the man would remember him or not. The official received the tickets without vouchsafing a glimmer of recognition. But he stared after Murchison when he had passed, with that curious, peering insolence typical of the breed.
Outside the station a very throaty individual in a very big cap, Harris tweed suit, white stock, and mulberry red waistcoat, was giving instructions to a porter with regard to a barrow-load of luggage. A trim dog-cart stood by the curb, with a sleek little woman in a tailor-made costume perched on the seat, and looking down on everybody with something of the keenness of a hawk.
It so happened that this exquisite piece of “breeding,” this Colonel Larter of county fame, stepped back against Murchison in turning towards his dog-cart.
“Beg pardon.”
The words were reinforced by a surprised and rather impertinent stare.
“What!”
“Don’t trouble to mention it, sir.”