Second! ach! I was never so insulted in my
life."
There was room enough inside the car to give the travellers a double
seat, half for themselves and the other for their knapsacks. These
impedimenta being removed the occupants of the carriage became aware
that they were in the company of two good-looking men, of refined
features, and in plain but gentlemanly attire. The lady passengers
glanced at them, from time to time, with approbation not unmingled with
amusement, but no responsive glance came from the bachelors. Wilkinson
had opened his knapsack, and had taken out his pocket Wordsworth, the
true poet, he said, for an excursion. Coristine had a volume of Browning
in his kit, but left it there, and went into the smoking-car for an
after breakfast whiff. The car had been swept out that morning by the
joint efforts of a brakesman and the newsagent, so that it was less
hideously repulsive than at a later stage in the day, when tobacco
juice, orange peel, and scraps of newspapers made it unfit for a decent
pig. The lawyer took out his plug, more easily carried than cut tobacco,
and whittled it down with his knife to fill his handsome Turk's head
meerschaum.
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