swear, at this safe distance, a smell of flowers in the air. "It's a most lovely ..." Trenchard said, smiling at me, "spring here ... I find...." I was compelled by some unexpected sense of fatherly duty to be practical. "You've got your things?" I said. "You've found your seat?" "Well, I didn't know ..." he stammered. "Where are they?" I asked him. He was not quite sure where they were. He stood, waving his hands, whilst the golden sunlight rippled over his face. I was suddenly irritated. "But please," I said, "there isn't much time. Four of us men have a compartment together. Just show me where your things are and then I'll introduce you." He seemed reluctant to move, as though the spot that he had chosen was the only safe one in the whole station; but I forced him forward, found his bags, had them placed in their carriage, then turned to introduce him to his companions. Anna Mihailovna had said to me: "This detachment will be older than the last. Doctor Nikitin--he'll take that other doctor's place, the one who had typhus--and Andrey Vassilievitch--you've known him for years. He talks a great deal but he's sympathetic and such a good business man. He'll be useful. Then there's an Englishman; I don't know much about him, except that he's been working for three months at the English Hospital. He's not a correspondent, never written a line in his life. I only saw him for a moment, but he seemed sympathetic...." Anna Mihailovna, as is well known to all of us, finds every one sympathetic simply because she has so much to do and so many people to see that she has no time to go deeply into things. If you have no time for judging character you must have some good common rule to go by. I had known little Andrey Vassilievitch for some years and had found him tiresome. Finally, I did not care about the possibility of an Englishman. Perhaps I had wished (through pride) to remain the only Englishman in our "Otriad." I had made friends with them all, I was at home with them. Another Englishman might transplant me in their affections. Russians transfer, with the greatest ease, their emotions from one place to another; or he might be a failure and so damage my country's reputation. Some such vain and stupid prejudice I had. I know that I looked upon our new additions with disfavour.