I record this remark because it was the last that I ever heard poor Tommy Evans make in this connection; and I think the reader will agree it was just what one would have expected of him.
We said good-bye after dinner. They all wanted to come to the station to see me off, but I was anxious to be alone with Dennis.
The others in any case had plenty to do, and I could scarcely let them sacrifice their “last few hours of liberty” to come and see me off. I rather expected that the excitement of the war would have prevented a lot of people travelling, but the reverse was the case. There seemed to be more people than ever on the platform, and I could not get a corner seat even in the Fort William coach. I bundled my things into a carriage and took up as much room as I could, and then Dennis and I strolled about the platform until the train was due to start.
“Strange mixtures of humanity you see on a railway platform,” Dennis remarked presently.
“Very,” I agreed. “I daresay there are some very curious professions represented here.”
“This chap, for instance,” said Dennis, indicating a youth in a tweed jacket and flannel trousers. “He might be anything from an M.P.’s private secretary to an artist’s model, for all we know. I should say he’s a journalist; he knows his way through a crowd as only journalists do.”
“A typical Yorkshire cattle-dealer in his Sunday best,” I suggested, as we passed another passenger. And so we went the length of the platform making rough guesses as to the professions of my fellow travellers. Suddenly I noticed a tall man, wearing a tweed cap and a long covert-coat, his hands in his pockets, a stumpy cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. His hair was gray, and his face bore signs of a tough struggle in early youth. His complexion was of that curious gray-yellow one sees frequently in America and occasionally in Denmark—something quite distinct from the bronze-gray of many colonials. I nudged Dennis.
“What did you make of that?” I asked him after we had passed.
“I should be much more interested to know what ‘that’ made of us,” he replied.