BEGINNING THE WEEK. 553 



whiskey and soda with me before you drive home ? " " Exactly 

 what I want." "A long time getting there, since Heyford's 

 Iron fires." " Heavens, they are taking us on ! " " Did you tell 

 the guard ? " " Of course I did. Haven't I travelled down every 

 Sunday for a score of years ? " Misery we are on for Rugby ! 

 And on its platform they descended a wrath-pouring crew, 

 magnificent in its disappointment and chagrin. The splendour 

 of magistracy, the majesty of the law, the power of commerce 

 and the flippant side of military- training were all brought to the 

 front the dignity of the former being sadly hampered by the 

 irrelevant hilarity of the latter, to whom the making the best 

 of a bad job seemed under the circumstances the only alternative. 

 Thus by mute and mutual agreement the seniors were left to 

 pour thunder upon the officials ; while the juniors betook them- 

 selves to the refreshment rooms, to explode their squibs on the 

 sleepy and somewhat unappreciative fairies that preside over 

 the late liquor department. But the rest of my tale is very 

 sober, serious, and not altogether devoid of pathos. 



The bar forsaken, the bar were conducted home not in the 

 panoply of robe and head-apparel, still less of coach or even 

 special engine, but as mere adjuncts of a coal train in a final 

 carriage upon which the shock, shock, shock of heavy trucks 

 struck at intervals as the clang of the night clock to doomed 

 malefactors. Tobacco is at such times a soothing instrument. 

 But when those instruments are six inches by one, the most 

 modern cigar case will hardly meet requirements so unexpected. 

 So cigarless, sleepless, and robbed of all attributes that main- 

 tain the dignity of men learned and reverenced, they merely 

 coaled it to Weedon, took ground in the pouring rain, and 

 thought themselves at home. But a Sunday staff has no 

 existence here. The platform was open and free, it is true : 

 but a platform without jury or audience is but a transposed 

 edition of a theatre by daylight. Persuasive eloquence, 

 magisterial tones, rhetorical displa} r had no field worse than 

 all not a single listener. And the doors were locked, exit 

 barred. Cicero they say, practised at least before a looking- 



