Corporal Sam and Other StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
General
Corporal Sam and Other Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Short stories, English
Nor was it remarked, when the luggage came to be sorted out and put
on board the boat express, that Dick's porter under his direction
collected and wheeled off Mr Markham's; while Mr Markham picked up
Dick's suit-case, walked away with it unchallenged to a third-class
smoking compartment and deposited it on the rack. There were three
other passengers in the compartment. 'Good Lord!' ejaculated one, as
the millionaire stepped out to purchase an evening paper.
'Isn't that Markham? Well!--and travelling third!' 'Saving habit--
second nature,' said another. 'That's the way to get rich, my boy.'
Meanwhile Dick, having paid for four places, and thereby secured a
first-class solitude, visited the telegraph office, and shrank the
few pounds in his pocket by sending a number of cablegrams.
On the journey up Mr Markham took some annoyance from the glances of
his fellow-passengers. They were furtive, almost reverential, and
this could only be set down to his exploit of yesterday. He thanked
Heaven they forbore to talk of it.
CHAPTER IV.
In the back-parlour of a bookseller's shop, between the Strand and
the Embankment, three persons sat at tea; the proprietor of the shop,
a gray little man with round spectacles and bushy eyebrows, his wife,
and a pretty girl of twenty or twenty-one. The girl apparently was a
visitor, for she wore her hat, and her jacket lay across the arm of
an old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall in the lamp's half
shadow; and yet the gray little bookseller and his little
Dresden-china wife very evidently made no stranger of her.
They talked, all three, as members of a family talk, when contented
and affectionate; at haphazard, taking one another for granted, not
raising their voices.
The table was laid for a fourth; and by-and-by they heard him coming
through the shop--in a hurry too. The old lady, always sensitive to
the sound of her boy's footsteps, looked up almost in alarm, but the
girl half rose from her chair, her eyes eager.
'I know,' she said breathlessly. 'Jim has heard--'
'Chrissy here? That's right.' A young man broke into the room, and
stood waving a newspaper. 'The _Carnatic's_ arrived--here it is
under "Stop Press"--I bought the paper as I came by Somerset House--
"_Carnatic_ arrived at Southampton 3.45 this afternoon. Her time
from Sandy Hook, 5 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes."
'Then she hasn't broken the record this time, though Dick was
positive she would,' put in the old lady. During the last six months
she had developed a craze for Atlantic records, and knew the
performances of all the great liners by heart.
'You bad little mother!'--Jim wagged a forefinger at her. 'You don't
deserve to hear another word.'
'Is there any more?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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