smoking-carriage when I joined my train at Plymouth; seated beside his
mother, an over-heated countrywoman in a state of subsiding fussiness.
We had a good five minutes to wait, but, as such women always will, she
had made a bolt for the first door within reach. Of course she found
herself in a smoking compartment, and of course she disliked tobacco,
but could not, although she made two false starts, make up her mind to
change. She had dropped upon one of the middle seats and dragged her
boy down into the next, thus leaving me the only vacant corner.
The others were occupied by a couple of drovers and a middle-aged man
with a newspaper, which he read column by column, advertisements and
all, without raising his eyes for a moment.

The guard just outside the carriage door had his whistle to his lips,
and his green flag lifted ready to wave, when the woman asked--
"Can anyone tell me if this train goes to London?"

The drovers and I assured her that it did.

"It stops at Bristol, doesn't it? My ticket is for Bristol."

The train was in motion by this time. We set her mind at ease.
She opened a limp basket (called a "frail" I believe), produced an apple
and offered it to the boy. He shook his head.

He was a passably good-looking coltish boy, in a best suit which he had
outgrown, and a hard black hat, the brim of which annoyed him when he
leaned back. A binding of black braid advertised what it was meant to
conceal--that the cuffs of his jacket had been lengthened; yet as he sat
with his hands crossed in his lap he displayed a deal of wrist.