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. When all was ready, he discovered, to his infinite disgust,
that he had no matches nor pipe-lights of any description. The news
agent, Frank, a well-known character on the road, supplied him with a
box of Eddy's manufacture, for which he declined to receive payment.
However, he pressed his wares upon the grateful Coristine, recommending
warmly the Samantha books and Frank Stockton's stories. "Are there any
women in them?" asked the smoker. "Full of them," replied Frank; "Why,
Samantha is a woman." "Take them away, and bring me something
different." The news agent returned with a volume made up of cartoons
and other illustrations from _Puck_, and soon the Irishman was shaking
his sides over the adventures of Brudder Sunrise Waterbury and similar
fictitious characters. So absorbed was he in this trivial literature
that he failed to notice the entrance of an old man, respectably dressed
who took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle, and was preparing to
smoke his three inches of clay. He was aroused by the salutation and
request:--