son, and I felt he wanted sitting on. I was doing the next best thing to that. What right had anyone to start for India in a top hat? Why, even the Dukes had worn bowlers and one of them a cap. I sat tight, and smiled like the tiger of the Niger.
Then the blow fell. That objectionable man stooped down slowly, with a snake-like movement, and what I saw even then was a nasty gloating smile—I believe he must have read my thoughts—stooped down and drew his beautiful shining topper carefully from underneath the seat, brushing it on his sleeve in that horrid, creepy way men have. I gazed fascinated at the snake-like movement. Then it flashed upon me. If I wasn't sitting on his hat, what, then, was I sitting on? I admit I lost my presence of mind right there. I leaped up with a little cry. Underneath, very flat, very subdued-looking, lay what had once been a big cardboard box of chocolate creams that that babyish girl Marjory had brought to eat by the way. I had had a premonition on the platform that I should never get on with Marjory. Needless to say, those chocolates were uneatable, and over the state of my dress I draw a veil. And it was new on that morning. I felt horribly aggrieved with the pompous man and Marjory and everybody in general, most of all with Lady Manifold, because she sympathised. I read the Morning Post upside down all the way to Dover.
