When I Stooped To Tie My Shoe
Another Current Was Set In Motion, And When I Took Charles Reade's
White
Lies from my portmanteau they glanced at one another as if to
say, 'Would that we could see in what
Language the book is written!'
As a travelling mystery I reached my highest point at Oxford, for
there I purchased a small basket of plums from a boy who handed them
in at the window of the carriage. After eating a few, I offered the
rest to a dowdy elderly woman on my left who was munching dry
biscuits from a paper bag. 'What next?' was the facial expression
of the entire company. My neighbour accepted the plums, but hid
them in her bag; plainly thinking them poisoned, and believing me to
be a foreign conspirator, conspiring against England through the
medium of her inoffensive person. In the course of the four-hours'
journey, I could account for the strange impression I was making
only upon the theory that it is unusual to comport oneself in a
first-class manner in a third-class carriage. All my companions
chanced to be third-class by birth as well as by ticket, and the
Englishwoman who is born third-class is sometimes deficient in
imagination.
Upon arriving at Great Belvern (which must be pronounced 'Bevern') I
took a trap, had my luggage put on in front, and start on my quest
for lodgings in West Belvern, five miles distant. Several addresses
had been given me by Hilda Mellifica, who has spent much time in
this region, and who begged me to use her name.
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