“What’s your opinion of politics at present, sir?” observed his friend, in an off-hand way.
“I haven’t any,” said Lavender, compelled to take back one of the newspapers and open it.
“I think myself they’re in a bad state; that’s my opinion. There ain’t a man among them that knows how to keep down those people; that’s my opinion, sir. What do you think?”
“Oh, I think so, too,” said Lavender. “You’ll find a good article in that paper on University Tests.”
The cheery person looked rather blank.
“I would like to hear your opinion about ’em, sir,” he said. “It ain’t much good reading only one side of a question; but when you can talk about and discuss it, now—”
“I am sorry I can’t oblige you,” said Lavender, goaded into making some desperate effort to release himself. “I am suffering from a relaxed throat at present. My doctor has warned me against talking too much.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. You don’t seem very well; perhaps the throat comes with a little feverishness, you see—a cold, in fact. Now if I was you I would try tannin lozenges for the throat. They’re uncommon good for the throat; and a little quinine for the general system—that would put you as right as a fiver. I tried it myself when I was down in ‘Ampshire last year. And you wouldn’t find a drop of this brandy a bad thing, either, if you don’t mind rowing in the same boat as myself.”
Lavender declined the proffered flask, and subsided behind a newspaper. His fellow-traveler lit another cheroot, took up Bradshaw, and settled himself in a corner.
Had Sheila come up this very line some dozen hours before? Lavender asked himself as he looked out on the hills and valleys and woods of Buckinghamshire. Had the throbbing of the engine and the rattle of the wheels kept the piteous eyes awake all through the dark night, until the pale dawn showed the girl a wild vision of Northern hills and moors telling her she was getting nearer to her own country? Not thus had Sheila proposed to herself to return home on the first holiday time that should occur to them both. He began to think of his present journey as it might have been in other circumstances. Would she have remembered any of those pretty villages which she saw one early morning long ago, when they were bathed in sunshine and scarcely awake to the new day? Would she be impatient at the delays at the stations, and anxious to hurry on to Westmoreland and Dumfries, to Glasgow and Oban and Skye, and then from Stornoway across the island to the little inn at Garra-na-hina?