Just at that moment he was hailed by a familiar voice from a smoking carriage, and looking round he saw Dudley leaning out of the window. “So you are off to the south, too!” he said. “Lucky fellow, how did you manage it?” The train had already begun to move, but the comedian with a beaming face still leant out of the window describing to the last moment the extraordinary run of luck he had had at billiards. “Go and play the same game,” he counselled; “it’s the only way to raise the wind. Good-bye, my boy! Meet again in better times.” He waved his hand cheerfully and was borne away, but the thing which lingered longest in Ralph’s sight was Ivy’s wistful, little face, as to the very last she gazed back at him. CHAPTER XIV “And forth into the fields I went, And nature’s living motion lent The pulse of hope to discontent. “I wonder’d at the bounteous hours The slow results of winter showers; You scarce could see the grass for flowers. “I wonder’d while I paced along; The woods were fill’d so full with song, There seem’d no room for sense of wrong.” “The Two Voices,” Tennyson. |It was just ten minutes past eleven by the station clock when Ralph, having parted with his companions, found himself outside in the highroad. He felt horribly desolate, and stood for a minute or two dismally contemplating a flaming red and yellow placard of a scene in “Cramond Prig,” which they had invariably played after “East Lynne.” Wretched as his experiences with the Company had been, they had at least been less dreary than solitude. He sorely missed Ivy’s bright face, and the comedian’s cheerful companionship. There was a certain bitterness too in the reflection that no one had taken much thought of what was to become of him, and that even Dudley, who had been kind and friendly enough in the past, had never dreamt of foregoing his journey to London and of taking two tickets to Glasgow.