TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

infected green country. While I perused a magazine
called Golf Illustrated I stole an occasional glance at the
two very first-class looking passengers who occupied
the other corners of the compartment. One of them
was a grey-haired lady with a crocodile-skin dressing-
case and a fur cloak. She was reading a book with
an air of refined hauteur. The other was a middle-
aged man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and a
glossy top-hat which he had ceremoniously arranged
on the ruck above him. He was glancing at Black-
wood's Magazine, and he had a bunch of violets in the
buttonhole of his opulent dark blue overcoat. From
the tone of voic-e in which he inquired whether she
would prefer the window clown a little I inferred that
the lady was a stranger to him. Compared with these
influent ial-l< u iking people, Aunt Evelyn in her countri-
fied tweed coat and skirt and her dowdy little hat
seemed only just presentable, I had yet to make the
significant discovery that the most distinguished
personages art; sometimes the most untidy.

Fortunately for her peaec of mind, my aunt was
much too tired to worry about the impression which
her exterior might be creating on two complete
strangers who were surveying her for the first and
probably the last time on earth. What she really
cared about was a cup of hot tea. But we should be
in the train another hour, and we couldn't possibly
get home before- six o'clock. Aunt Evelyn, however,
though she seldom travelled, was not without re-
sourcefulness in the matter of railway journeys, and
what she dithf t know about, picnics wasn't worth
knowing. Now among the numerous light articles
which she hut I brought into the carriage there was a
certain plebeian-looking basket which contained every
facility for making tea. Most essential among the

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