"It's my fault," said the old chap like a good fellow, "I ought to have
caught hold. You get out and I'll hand you your bag."
"It's very kind of you," said the young man. He was really flattered by
so much attention, but he knew himself what a good companion he was and
he could understand it; besides which they had made friends during that
little journey. He always liked a man to whom he had lost some money in
an honest game.
There was a heavy crowd upon the platform, and two men barging up out of
it saluted the old man boisterously by the name of Jack. He twinkled at
them with his eyes as he began moving the luggage about, and stood for a
moment in the doorway with his own bag in his right hand and the young
man's bag in his left. The young man so saw it for an instant, a fine
upstanding figure--he saw his bag handed by some mistake to the second
of the old man's friends, a porter came by at the moment pushing through
the crowd with a trolley, an old lady made a scene, the porter
apologized, the crowd took sides, some for the porter, some for the old
lady; the young man, with the deference of his age, politely asked
several people to make way, but when he had emerged from the struggle
his companion, his companion's friends, and his own bag could not be
found; or at any rate he could not make out where they were in the great
mass that pushed and surged upon the platform.
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