laces, but I may tell you that it is a station on the way to Putney,
where I have a friend), when she responded with lightning-like swiftness
that it couldn't be healthy to live in Glasgow. This bordered on
repartee, so I countered rapidly with the brilliant suggestion that a
good many people managed to live there, hoping she would not score by
the obvious rejoinder that a good many people died there. If she had, I
can't imagine how I should have extricated myself. Luckily she merely
murmured, "Ah, yes," and reflected. I was just stepping off the train at
a station (Putney--to be explicit, it is a lady friend) when there
seemed to be a collision, and I caught myself saying, "Indeed!" though I
don't know why. She nodded approval, however, and I ventured on a
meditative "Ye-es."

"But they don't seem to mind," she said, glancing at me blandly through
her spectacles. "_Do_ they?"

"You see," I answered, chancing it, "they are so used to it." She smiled
and agreed.

"That must be the reason," she said. For what, I hadn't the remotest
idea; but this just shows what presence of mind will do for one in an
emergency.

"What a difference they must find," I went on boldly, and lapsed into a
muse. She sighted it, however, and replied in less than five minutes--

"You mean now that the old-fashioned ones are coming in again?"

Here was a catastrophe. Did she refer to hats, or skirts, or Christmas
cards? What sudden original observation had I unfortunately missed
during that last journey South-westward? At all costs I must keep cool.
I pulled myself together and plunged.

"Yes," I said. "You see the old-fashioned ones were so awfully tight,
weren't they?"

"Tight?" she echoed. "Not _tight_."

"Well, not exactly _tight_," I answered, feeling rather distracted. "I
meant large."

She looked at me suspiciously, I thought. "_I_ think they're too long,"
she said, "and such a lot of people in them."

This was growing too complicated, and I wished heartily we had stuck to
Glasgow and its weather.

"One finds them," she added, "so hard to follow."

I racked my miserable brain for anything that was lengthy, populous, and
difficult to follow; in vain.

"Still," I gasped, glancing at the door, "one can always ... one can
generally ... one can sometimes sit down ... for a rest ... if one is
dreadfully tired," I explained.

She gazed at me reproachfully.

"I don't usually stand at the back of the pit," she said. "The last tim