“This, Sir,” said the stranger, as I lowered my paper to help myself to a proffered roll—­“this is one of the Two-Hour trains.”

“You don’t say,” said I politely but not encouragingly.

“Two hours,” he repeated impressively.

“Indeed?  Two whole hours and not a moment less?” and I returned to my paper pending the soup’s arrival.

“Is it not wonderful,” he resumed when I was at his mercy again, “to be travelling at sixty miles an hour and eating soup at the same time?”

“Some people eat soup,” said I, “and some drink it.  For myself, I give it a miss;” and I returned to the news.

With the fish:  “I came up by the breakfast train this morning,” said he, “and I now return by the dining train.”  He meant by this to give credit to the Company rather than to himself, but even so it seemed to fall short of the complete ideal.  There was something wanting.  It was luncheon, of course.

“They run luncheon cars too,” said he.

“Then there seems to be no reason why you should ever leave the train at all,” I remarked, seeking refuge again in my paper.  In spite, however, of my coldness, he continued to assail me with similar facts every time I emerged.  Finally he took a sheet of slightly soiled paper and pencilled on it a schedule of our movements.  It ran:—­

  Mileage.  Place.  Time.

—­     Euston       6.55 P.M.
51/2      Willesden   [7.4]  "
171/2      Watford     [7.18] "
463/4      Bletchley   [7.50] "
821/4      Rugby       [8.24] "
941/4      Coventry    [8.36] "
113       Birmingham   8.55  "

“To give this the very careful consideration it deserves,” said I, “I must be left absolutely to myself.”

Later on, feeling that I had perhaps been rude, I offered the man a cigar by way of compensation.  He accepted it as a mark of esteem and burst forth into more conversation.  By now a little fed up with trains himself he suggested, for the sake of something new to say, that he had met me before somewhere.  At first I had some idea of asking for my cigar to be returned, but instead I gave in to his persistence.  More, I joined in the conversation with an energy which surprised him.

“Now I come to think of it we have seen each other before; but where?” I said.

He thought promiscuously, disconnectedly and aloud.  I could accept none of his suggestions because all referred to commercial rooms in provincial hotels, places to which I have not the entree.  “But I know now,” I declared brightly; “it was at a place just this side of London that I saw you first.”

“First?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” said I.  “I have seen you more than once.  Surely you haven’t forgotten that time at Watford?”

He felt that I had the advantage of him.  “When was that?” he asked.

“Not very long after the first time; and the next occasion I remember seeing you was at a place called—­called—­something beginning with a B.”