H. B. Marriott Watson

“ I made my choice, and started again, and ten minutes later I was up against the square railings again. So far as I can calculate I must have battled with the problem of how to reach No. 9 for quite an hour. You see, as I did not know how to reach any place, I might just as well be trying to reach No. 9. At the end of an hour I heard a growing rumble of noise. By this time I was wandering mechanically, as an automaton might do, groping along railings, tapping on kerbs, and warding off a thousand menaces that emerged from the fog. ”

“ But indubitably the two elderly ladies opposite to me were foreign to that foul and tossing sea outside. They cast glances at the yellow darkness of the windows, incessantly plied the conductor with questions, most of which he ignored, and eagerly exclaimed to each other when the vehicle lurched into the lesser gloom of a street lamp. ”

“ We had lost our way through trusting to “'King's Cross,” and it was certainly not equitable to abuse “King's Cross” because of our blind confidence. Moreover, it would not remedy matters. As I climbed down, the conductor, who had listened to the war of tongues philosophically, leaped on his step from the kerb, and there was that in his eye which gave me pause. I had returned full of my news, but the conductor's eye implored me. He seemed to wave his hand in despair at the two elderly ladies and ask mercy. ”

“ It is amazing, but it is man.”
I was in love with her, then; and really by the sound of her voice I had no objection. I was also jealous, and I had been rude. She had, no doubt, stopped the cab and got down to avoid me, in a fury; and I, no doubt, had driven on in a sulk. But now that I had come back, what was I to do? It was abominably cold and discomfortable, but I had not noticed that for the last ten minutes.
“Have you any idea where we are?” my companion interrupted my meditations to inquire. ”

“ Yet I like your threats in that amiable voice better than those sour tones in the cab.”
Well, I was Captain Moreton, she was a widow, and I had been rude to her in a cab. I wondered why.
“In similar circumstances I should offend again,” I said.
She was silent a moment, and then out of the nether darkness her voice issued meditatively, yet with a note, as it were, of defiance.
“Do you suppose there will ever be born a man who does not look upon woman as his necessary adjunct? Are we to have no rights, because the sultans of the world deign to cast their eyes on us? ”

“ I said resolutely, and we walked on arm-in-arm.
Dejection had made us sympathetic, and I think she had forgotten my offence. When, after stumbling across a roadway, we brought up at a corner house, she said somewhat timidly: “I—I think I will go with you up to the house.”
I did not warn her that it was possible, if this house was inhabited at last, that the light might discover us to each other. I only assented briskly. I was right, as it proved, in my thought of the illumination. The fanlight was ablaze, and even the fog scattered in its circle. My companion's face and hair were aureate ”

“ Suddenly I stopped under a lamp-post.
“This road seems to me so narrow,” I said, “that it may be a mews. If it is so, it will be only a cul-de-sac, and no fit place for ladies. If you will wait here I will explore and return in a few minutes.” ”

“ At seventy I suppose we are resigned to fortune; and after all the omnibus was comfortable, and some one else was responsible.
The two elderly ladies began to talk to each other in low whispers, and once or twice endeavoured to attract the attention of the conductor. But he was adamant. It was the second stoppage that did the mischief, accompanied as it was by a much louder match between Bill and “King's Cross.”
“What is it? oh, what is it?” demanded the elderly ladies in agitation ”