4. Immediately on taking possession of your carriage, recline the
whole length of the five seats, faced by your three sympathetic
and anxious-miened female companions. Be careful to give each of
the assistant porters certainly not less than sixpence apiece in
ostentatious fashion. Do not, however, as yet administer the shilling,
or perhaps, eighteenpence you purpose giving to the original guard of
the train who is to hand you over to the official who will have charge
of you after Bolchester.
5. You will possibly have a _mauvais quart d'heure_ before departure,
for though your guard, in hopes of the remunerative fee, will
have carefully locked you in, he will not be able to prevent the
calculating and more or less unfeeling British public, who, composed
of a party of nine, are looking for as many places as they can find
together, from discovering that you have six vacant places in your
carriage, and directing the attention of other railway officials, not
initiated into your secret agreement, to this circumstance. You must
therefore be prepared for some such curt brutality as, "Why, look
'ere, EMMA, there's room for 'arf-a-dozen of us 'ere!" or, "I'm
sure 'e needn't be a sprawlin' like that, takin' 'arf the carriage
to 'isself," a rebuke which your feminine supporters resent in
their severest manner. You are, however, at length saved by the
interposition of your guardian angel, who sweeps away the party of
nine unseated ones with a voice of commanding control, as much as to
say, "This isn't your end of the train; besides, can't you see the
poor gentleman's pretty well dying?" And he does hurry them off, and
pack them in somewhere or other, but whether to their satisfaction or
not, it is easier to hazard a guess than faithfully to record.
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