At nine precisely he was in his carriage
with his coachman on the box to drive his horses, his man Mole also,
and Piggy the little dog in with him. He knows it was nine, because
he asked the butler what time it was as he left the dining-room, and
the butler answered "Five minutes to nine, my Lord"; moreover, the
clock in the dining-room, the one on the stairs and his own watch,
all corroborated the butler's statement.
He arrived at St. Pancras. "If," as he sarcastically wrote to the
company, "your _own clocks_ are to be trusted," at 9.21.
So far so good. He had twenty-six minutes to spare. On his carriage
driving up to the station he was annoyed to discover an enormous
seething mob through which it was impossible to penetrate, swirling
round the booking office and behaving with a total lack of
discipline which made the confusion ten thousand times worse than it
need have been.
"I wish," said Mr. Quail to me later, with some heat, "I wish I
could have put some of those great hulking brutes into the ranks for
a few months! Believe me, conscription would work wonders!" Mr.
Quail himself holds a commission in the Yeomanry, and knows what he
is talking about. But that is neither here nor there.
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