out into the compartment. Mr. Flood stopped and returned his look in kind, with his bulging and bejowled stare of comic stupefaction.
In a moment more the Englishman recovered himself, grimaced with his shy, quick, toothy grin, and blurted out at Flood, as to the other men:
“Oh, hello! Hello! How d’ye do?”
“I’m pretty good, thank you!” old Flood said hoarsely and slowly, after a heavy pause. “How are you?” and continued to stare heavily and stupidly at him.
But already the Englishman had turned abruptly from him, his face and lean neck reddening instantly and fiercely with the angry embarrassment of a shy man. And with the same air of astonished discovery he now addressed himself to the man with the long thin nose and palely freckled face, blurting his words out rapidly and by rushes as before, but somehow conveying to the others the sense of his intimacy and friendship with this man and of their own exclusion.
“Oh!… There you are, Jim!” he was saying in his astounded and explosive fashion. “Where the devil have you been all night?… I say!” he went on rapidly without waiting for an answer, “won’t you come in and have a spot with me before you turn in?”
Every suggestion of the disdain and cold aloofness which had characterized the other man’s manner towards his fellow-passengers had now vanished at the Englishman’s words. Indeed, in the way he now came forward, smiling, and put his hand in a friendly manner on the Englishman’s arm, there was something almost scrambling in its effusive eagerness. “Why yes, Hugh,” he said hastily. “I’d be delighted, of course!… Just a minute,” he said in an almost confused tone of voice, “till I get my brief-case…. Where did I leave it? Oh, here it is!” he cried, picking it up, and making for the door with his companion, “I’m all ready now! Let’s go!”
“Hugh! Hugh!” cried Robert who had accompanied the Englishman when he entered the compartment, and whom the Englishman now seemed to have forgotten entirely, “will I see you to-morrow before you get off?” The words were spoken in a deep, rapid, eager tone of voice, and in the tone and manner of the youth who spoke them there was the same suggestion of almost fawning eagerness that had characterized the older man.
“Eh! What’s that?” the Englishman cried in a startled tone, turning abruptly and staring at the young man who had addressed him. “Oh! Yes,
