Of course
he couldn't leave off, so I said that I would meet them and take them
home; we only lived about a quarter of a mile from the station, and
generally walked.
I couldn't find my racquet for some time, and consequently had a race
with the train, which luckily ended in a dead heat, for I reached the
platform just as it steamed in.
The few passengers quickly dispersed, but there was no sign of Jack; a
tall, elderly man, wrapped in a thick overcoat, in spite of the hot
evening, stood forlornly alone. I was just wondering if he could be
Jack's father when he came up to me and said, "Are you Margaret?"
"Yes," I answered.
"I have often heard my boy speak of you," he said, looking extremely
miserable.
[Sidenote: Jack does not Come]
"But isn't he coming?" I cried.
He replied "No" in such a hopeless voice and sighed so heavily that I
was beginning to feel positively depressed, when he changed the subject
by informing me that his bag had been left behind but was coming on by a
later train, so, giving instructions for it to be sent up directly it
arrived, I piloted him out of the station.
I had expected him to be eccentric, but he certainly was the oddest man
I had ever met; he seemed perfectly obsessed by the loss of his bag, and
would talk of nothing else, though I was longing to know why Jack hadn't
come. The absence of his dress clothes seemed to worry him intensely.
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