The landscape seemed hauntingly familiar,
but what surprised him was the number of known faces that rose and
smiled at him. A kind of dream confusion blurred his outer sight;
At Bexley, as he hurried past, he caught dimly a glimpse of an old
nurse whom he remembered trying to break into bits with a hop-pole he
could barely lift; and, most singular thing, on the Sidcup platform, a
group of noisy schoolboys, with smudged faces and ridiculously small
caps stuck on the back of their heads, had scrambled viciously to get
into his compartment. They carried brown canvas satchels full of
crumpled books and papers, and though the names had mostly escaped
him, he remembered every single face. There was Barlow--big, bony chap
who stammered, bringing his words out with a kind of whistling sneeze.
Barlow had given him his first thrashing for copying his stammer.
There was young Watson, who funked at football and sneaked to a master
about a midnight supper. He stole pocket-money, too, and was expelled.
Then he caught a glimpse of another fellow with sly face and laughing
eyes; the name had vanished, but he was the boy who put jalap in the
music-master's coffee, and received a penny from five or six others
who thus escaped a lesson. All waved their hands to him as the train
hurried away, and the last thing he saw was the station lamp where he
had lit the cigar that made three of them, himself included, deadly
sick.
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