McPherson (seeing his nephew off by steamer). "An' fur fear ye mhet wi' ony o' they German submarines, here's a braw life-savin' wais'cut. They tell me they're verra efficacious."
Donald. "Wha's gotten the rest o' the suit?"
RECESSIONAL.
Cab whistles were shrieking and shrilling on every side. The rain was pouring. Commissionaires and other theatre attendants were darting away and returning clinging to the sides of taxis. The lobby was a crush of white-shirted men and low-necked women in wraps. The pavements were filled with passers-by. Under all the awnings people were massed. Umbrellas glistened.
In short, the conditions were ripe for taking a backward step in civilisation and hailing a hansom; and this is what I did.
It was my first hansom for five or six years, and the sensation of being near to the hindquarters of that dangerous animal the horse, and having no buffer state in the person of a driver, was alarming. At every slip it seemed inevitable that the horse would fall. He slid and sprawled and swerved until I was sure my end had come: all so different from the steady rigid progress and security of a motor.
None the less, he did not fall, and by degrees I won back some confidence, and, the rain having ceased, leaned over the doors and began rather to like the fresh air and my romantic perch. The taxi, I mused, is no such private box at the comedy of the streets as a hansom is. There is no invigoration in a taxi, except possibly for the driver.
The past surged back. I thought of hansom rides in the days, and even more in the nights, when all the world was young and William II. of Germany was more or less a decent fellow. I remembered this fair companion and that... Jolly things hansoms, then. Absolutely made for two. The horse's jingling bell brought to mind so much that was merry and mad... Those bells used to be almost the sweetest instrument in the London orchestra. Hooting horns are a sad declension.
Suddenly I had a return of panic, but of a different kind. How on earth should I know what to pay him? I wondered, recalling old arguments with drivers which the introduction of the taximeter had made impossible for so many years now. I felt in my pocket. I had only two half-crowns; they were my sole silver coins; and the fare in a taxi would be one-and-four and twopence tip: one-and-sixpence. Would the hansom driver have a shilling change for one of my half-crowns, and would he give it me if he had? So my thoughts ran on, and I laughed to think how the past was all reconstructing itself; for that is how I used to speculate on the way home, almost regularly, years ago, when half-crowns were fewer too. I found myself rather enjoying the situation. Is it all to the good, I wondered, that the machinery of the taximeter should have banished these tremendous dubieties? Has life really improved? Has it?
"How much shall I give you?" I asked the driver when we stopped.
"I'll leave it you," he said, as I guessed he would.
But I did not pay him at once; I had questions to be answered.
"How 's business?" I asked.
"Pretty poor," he replied. "Wet nights are all right; but they don't come too often. I wait for hours for a fare some days. Some days I don't get one."
"Then how on earth do you live?"
I asked him.
"We rub along," he said.
But by what means I could not for the life of me see.
"Why don't you learn to drive a taxi?" I asked.
"I don't seem to want to," he replied. "It's not my line. Horses is my line."
"But it's the taxis that are too much for you," I said. "It's they that are doing you in."
"That's right," he said. "As cabs they beat us every time. They're quicker, and they tell you what to pay. But there's one way in which we beat them."
