VI
A case in which a personal wrong rather than a personal right was
offensively asserted, was that of a lady, young and too fair to
be so unfair, in a crowded train coming from the Doncaster Races
to York. She had kept a whole first-class compartment to herself,
putting her maid into the second-class adjoining, and heaping the
vacant seats with her hand-baggage, which had also overflowed
into the corridor. At the time the train started she was
comforting herself in her luxurious solitude with a cup of tea,
and she stood up, as if to keep other people out. But, after
waiting, seven of us, in the corridor, until she should offer to
admit us, we all swarmed in upon her, and made ourselves
indignantly at home. When it came to that she offered no protest,
but gathered up her belongings, and barricaded herself with them.
Among the rest there was a typewriting-machine, but what manner
of young lady she was, or whether of the journalistic or the
theatrical tribe, has never revealed itself to this day. We could
not believe that she was very high-born, not nearly so high, for
instance, as the old lady who helped dispossess her, and who,
when we ventured the hope that it would not rain on the morrow,
which was to be St.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227