Familiar woods and a little blue-eyed stream then hid the vision
... and a moment later he was standing on the platform of his
childhood's station, giving up his first-class ticket (secretly
ashamed that it was not third) to a station-master-ticket-collector
person who simply was not real at all.
For he had no beard. He was small, too, and insignificant. The way he
had dwindled, with the enormous station that used to be a mile or so
in length, was severely disappointing. That STATION-MASTER with the
beard ought to have lived for ever. His niche in the Temple of Fame
was sure. One evening he had called in full uniform at the house and
asked to see Master Henry Rogers, the boy who had got out 'WHILE-THE-
TRAIN-WAS-STILL-IN-MOTION,' and had lectured him gravely with a face
like death. Never again had he left a train 'whilestillinmotion,'
though it was years before he discovered how his father had engineered
that awful, salutary visit.
He asked casually, in a voice that hardly seemed his own, about the
service back to town, and received the answer with a kind of wonder.
It was so respectful. The porters had not found him out yet; but the
moment they did so, he would have to run. He did not run, however. He
walked slowly down the Station Road, swinging the silver-knobbed cane
the office clerks had given him when he left the City.
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