That day week saw Alice, Harry, and Celeste (a little pert _soubrette_, whom Alice had brought back from Paris with her), on their way to the railway-station at H--------; a groom and a couple of saddle-horses (without which Harry could not support the burden of a London life) having preceded them by a slower train. As Harry had a great horror of being too late, and had flurried and bustled Alice to such a degree that, if she had not been the most good-natured little woman in the world (except in matters connected with the feelings), she would assuredly have lost her temper, of course they were at least a quarter of an hour too soon, and were forced to promenade up and down beneath a Brobdignagian glass roof, open at each end, and enjoy the large supply of draughts afforded by this ingenious compromise between indoors and out of doors. Having paced up and down the platform for some ten minutes or so--lost Celeste and the trunks, and found them again--and narrowly escaped violent death from wild luggage-barrows, urged by reckless and excited porters, neatly bound in green corduroy, and numbered like the lots in a saleroom,--the train by which they were to fly to London crawled up ignominiously at the tail of a strong-minded cart-horse, which a heroic but unclean supernumary conducted in the way he should go. Just as Alice had taken her seat, and was imploring Harry to join her before a dreadful green dragon of a locomotive engine (which had been getting up its steam, and taking in its fuel, and wetting its whistle, and otherwise performing its awful toilet in a neighbouring cavern, whence it issued looking as vicious, and dangerous, and eager to burst in a tunnel, as a furious steam-devil could do) should get at him and do him a mischief, a tall, elegant-looking young man, who was seeking for an unoccupied place, suddenly exclaimed-- “I beg pardon, but surely I have the pleasure of seeing Harry--a--that is--Mr. Coverdale?” “A true bill, sir,” replied Harry; “but just at present you’ve all the pleasure to yourself, for I must honestly confess that I do not recollect you; and yet--no--yes--why, it can’t be little Alfred Courtland?” “As for the ‘little,’ I must leave you to judge for yourself; the copy-books tell us that ‘all weeds grow apace,’ and I’m afraid I’m a shocking example; but Alfred Courtland I most certainly am, and delighted to meet an old acquaintance--if an urchin in the under-school dare pretend to have been on such a footing with one of the sixth form.”