He had mixed up shirts with shoes. His clothes were rolled in bundles, his
collars embraced his sponge, his trees, divorced from boots, lay on the top
of an unprotected bottle of hair-wash; he had tried to fit his brushes
against a box of tooth-powder and the top had already come off. Turner
shook out his dress suit and discovered a couple of hotel towels which had
got mysteriously hidden in the folds. She held them up severely.
"No wonder you can't get your things in if you take away half the hotel
linen," and she threw them to the other side of the room.
In twenty minutes she had worked the magic of Wiggleswick. Septimus was
humbly grateful.
"If I were you, sir," she said, "I'd go to the station at once and sit on
my boxes till my mistress arrives."
"I think I'll do it, Turner," said Septimus.
Turner went back to Zora flushed, triumphant, and indignant.
"If you think, ma'am," said she, "that Mr. Dix is going to help us on our
journey, you're very much mistaken. He'll lose his ticket and he'll lose
his luggage and he'll lose himself, and we'll have to go and find them."
"You must take Mr. Dix humorously," said Zora.
"I've no desire to take him at all, ma'am." And Turner snorted virtuously,
as became her station.
Zora found him humbly awaiting her on the platform in company with Clem
Sypher, who presented her with a great bunch of roses and a bundle of
illustrated papers. Septimus had received as a parting guerdon an enormous
package of the cure, which he embraced somewhat dejectedly. It was Sypher
who looked after the luggage of the party. His terrific accent filled the
station. Septimus regarded him with envy. He wondered how a man dared
order foreign railway officials about like that.
"If I tried to do it they would lock me up. I once interfered in a street
row."
Zora did not hear the dire results of the interference. Sypher claimed her
attention until the train was on the point of starting.
"Your address in England? You haven't given it."
"The Nook, Nunsmere, Surrey, will always find me."
"Nunsmere?" He paused, pencil in hand, and looked up at her as she stood
framed in the railway carriage window. "I nearly bought a house there last
year. I was looking out for one with a lawn reaching down to a main railway
track. This one had it."
"Penton Court?"
"Yes. That was the name."
"It's still unsold," laughed Zora idly.
"I'll buy it at once," said he.
_"En voiture_," cried the guard.
Sypher put out his masterful hand.
"Au revoir. Remember. We are friends. I never say what I don't mean."
The train moved out of the station. Zora took her seat opposite Septimus.
"I really believe he'll do it," she said.
"What?"
"Oh, something crazy," said Zora. "Tell me about the street row."
* * * * *