Sulkily he resigned himself to the inevitable, waiting and watching,
while the boat slid and blundered clumsily, paddle-wheels churning
the filthy waters over side, to the floating bridge; while the
winches rattled, and the woman, sitting up briskly in the driver's
seat of the motor-car, bent forward and advanced the spark; while
the chain fell clanking and the car shot out, over the bridge,
through the gates, and away, at a very considerable, even if lawful,
rate of speed.
Whereupon, writing _Finis_ to the final chapter of Romance,
voting the world a dull place and life a treadmill, anathematizing
in no uncertain terms his lack of resource and address, Maitland
paid off his cabby, alighted, and to that worthy's boundless
wonder, walked into the waiting-room of the railway terminus
without deviating a hair's-breadth from the straight and
circumscribed path of the sober in mind and body.
The ten-twenty had departed by a bare two minutes. The next and
last train for Greenfields was to leave at ten-fifty-nine.
Maitland with assumed nonchalance composed himself upon a bench in
the waiting-room to endure the thirty-seven minute interval. Five
minutes later an able-bodied washerwoman with six children in
quarter sizes descended upon the same bench; and the young man in
desperation allowed himself to be dispossessed. The news-stand
next attracting him, he garnered a fugitive amusement and two
dozen copper cents by the simple process of purchasing six "night
extras," which he did not want, and paying for each with a
five-cent piece.
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