'Good-bye.' 'Good-bye.' You feel quite yourself again, and are even prepared to walk along a few steps to smile a last adieu. Then suddenly the train stops dead, and at once you are an inane, blithering idiot again. All your newly-regained self-confidence goes, and you swear solemnly under your breath that you will never in all your life see anybody off by train again. And when it's a real sad parting and there's a danger of tears, then Heaven help you!
I felt that this digression on the eccentricity of starting trains was necessary to explain the fact that I found myself shaking hands with Lord Hendley for the third time. How it happened I don't quite know. I suppose it was that I kept on forgetting to whom I had said good-bye and to whom not, and then remembering as soon as I went to say good-bye again. But I really do think any mistake is excusable on an occasion like this. Of course no one could have any desire to shake hands three times with anybody. It was pure accident, but it made me feel very silly. I guess if I'd been a servant-maid I should have giggled right there.
We were all in the carriage now, Lady Manifold, Marjory torn from the gaze of admiring Tommy Lovelace, myself, the pompous friend of Duchesses and the submissive lady, who, it was perhaps fortunate, had no one to see them off. It was enough of a block round our carriage as it was. Marjory and I filled the window, Lady Manifold sat back placidly, probably thinking of Tommy. At last, to my intense relief, the train moved. Then it stopped.
