significantly, looking at me this time. ‘Lots are ever so nice to their wives.’ But I refused to be drawn into this topic, however interesting it may in reality be!
‘Well, I for one still believe it must have been that strange young man that old Martha saw,’ I cried, ‘and I’m determined to try to find out something!’
‘Why don’t you just tell the police inspector about it next time he comes to the house, then,’ said Peter. ‘Rushing about hunting things out for yourself, and asking questions – why, that’s not right for a lady like you!’
The young and liberated are often the most prejudiced of all, Dora, do you not find?
‘Oh, but I shan’t do that, Peter!’ I said hastily and soothingly. ‘I didn’t mean to at all – I meant
you
to go into the station and ask. Won’t you do it? Please? For me?’
We were nearing the very station by this time, and although I could see that he would have much preferred to avoid the whole story, Peter could not resist my calculatedlycharming appeal (accompanied, I am ashamed to confess, by fluttering eyelashes).
‘You stay here and wait, then,’ he said firmly, alighting. But this suggestion taxed my tolerance too highly.
‘Oh no, I want to watch you do it!’ I cried with assumed girlishness. ‘I shall stay right away from you, I promise – I shan’t even listen. You’ll tell me what they say.’ I suspected that without my watchful eye, he might not take the job seriously, and I had no intention of allowing that.
In spite of his reticence, Peter wished to please me, so he entered the station and I followed him a short way behind, stopped in a quiet corner, and affected to be waiting. Peter sauntered up to the window, and was soon deep in conversation with the gentleman behind it. There were no other clients in sight, no trains, and only two or three other people quietly standing about, and the man seemed pleased enough at the unexpected chat. He soon called another from the room behind, and all three put their heads together. Chuckling and exclamations were to be heard, gestures were made, a timetable was even taken out and consulted. I was most grievously beset by curiosity, but forced myself to bide my time patiently.
Have you ever noticed, Dora, how men are just incapable of repeating a conversation that they have heard? Women are all past masters at the task; they want to recount the very words that were spoken, and even the intonations, the inflections and the glances that accompany them, and top it all off with a keen analysis, whereas men seem incapable of giving even the merest coherent summary. Arthur isparticularly hopeless at it, but Peter, alas, was not much better; after a good quarter of an hour of conversation with the men in the station, after we climbed back up on the box together and started off on our way home, all he found to say was,
‘Yep, they saw him right enough.’
This information was enough to greatly excite my thirst for further detail!
‘Whatever did you talk about for the whole time?’ I asked coaxingly.
‘I don’t know, nothing really,’ was the foolish but typical answer. Still, by dint of much insistence, I elicited from him the fascinating information that not only did the gentlemen, who worked there every day of the week, remember a red-caped young man appearing in the station, but even that he stopped to ask for timetables to plan his return to London that same afternoon.
‘And he bought his ticket and took the return train, just as he had planned,’ ended Peter. ‘Now I think you’ve learnt what you wanted to, and had best just explain the whole thing to the police if you really care to do it – personally, I’d leave it alone, police and all, if I was you!’
Should I tell the police about it, or not? There will always be time to do so; it does not seem necessary to be hasty. On the other hand, they have a great many means to discover much more than I ever could about the mysterious young
‘Well, I for one still believe it must have been that strange young man that old Martha saw,’ I cried, ‘and I’m determined to try to find out something!’
‘Why don’t you just tell the police inspector about it next time he comes to the house, then,’ said Peter. ‘Rushing about hunting things out for yourself, and asking questions – why, that’s not right for a lady like you!’
The young and liberated are often the most prejudiced of all, Dora, do you not find?
‘Oh, but I shan’t do that, Peter!’ I said hastily and soothingly. ‘I didn’t mean to at all – I meant
you
to go into the station and ask. Won’t you do it? Please? For me?’
We were nearing the very station by this time, and although I could see that he would have much preferred to avoid the whole story, Peter could not resist my calculatedlycharming appeal (accompanied, I am ashamed to confess, by fluttering eyelashes).
‘You stay here and wait, then,’ he said firmly, alighting. But this suggestion taxed my tolerance too highly.
‘Oh no, I want to watch you do it!’ I cried with assumed girlishness. ‘I shall stay right away from you, I promise – I shan’t even listen. You’ll tell me what they say.’ I suspected that without my watchful eye, he might not take the job seriously, and I had no intention of allowing that.
In spite of his reticence, Peter wished to please me, so he entered the station and I followed him a short way behind, stopped in a quiet corner, and affected to be waiting. Peter sauntered up to the window, and was soon deep in conversation with the gentleman behind it. There were no other clients in sight, no trains, and only two or three other people quietly standing about, and the man seemed pleased enough at the unexpected chat. He soon called another from the room behind, and all three put their heads together. Chuckling and exclamations were to be heard, gestures were made, a timetable was even taken out and consulted. I was most grievously beset by curiosity, but forced myself to bide my time patiently.
Have you ever noticed, Dora, how men are just incapable of repeating a conversation that they have heard? Women are all past masters at the task; they want to recount the very words that were spoken, and even the intonations, the inflections and the glances that accompany them, and top it all off with a keen analysis, whereas men seem incapable of giving even the merest coherent summary. Arthur isparticularly hopeless at it, but Peter, alas, was not much better; after a good quarter of an hour of conversation with the men in the station, after we climbed back up on the box together and started off on our way home, all he found to say was,
‘Yep, they saw him right enough.’
This information was enough to greatly excite my thirst for further detail!
‘Whatever did you talk about for the whole time?’ I asked coaxingly.
‘I don’t know, nothing really,’ was the foolish but typical answer. Still, by dint of much insistence, I elicited from him the fascinating information that not only did the gentlemen, who worked there every day of the week, remember a red-caped young man appearing in the station, but even that he stopped to ask for timetables to plan his return to London that same afternoon.
‘And he bought his ticket and took the return train, just as he had planned,’ ended Peter. ‘Now I think you’ve learnt what you wanted to, and had best just explain the whole thing to the police if you really care to do it – personally, I’d leave it alone, police and all, if I was you!’
Should I tell the police about it, or not? There will always be time to do so; it does not seem necessary to be hasty. On the other hand, they have a great many means to discover much more than I ever could about the mysterious young
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