n tamer of my youthful experience,
he was doubtless conscious of the aspect his temerity wore in the eyes
of beholders. He must have been showing off.

"Have you taken opinion?" he asked; and then, seeing the woman's lack of
comprehension, he translated the question--badly, for he conveyed a
different meaning--thus,

"I mean, have you had a doctor for him?"

The train was slackening speed.

"Oh! yes, sir."

"And what do _they_ say?"

The child turned its head and looked the rubicund man full in the eyes.
Never in the face of any man or woman have I seen such an expression of
sublime pity and contempt....

I remembered a small urchin I had once seen at the Zoological Gardens.
Urged on by a band of other urchins, he was throwing pebbles at a great
lion that lolled, finely indifferent, on the floor of its playground.
Closer crept the urchin; he grew splendidly bold; he threw larger and
larger pebbles, until the lion rose suddenly with a roar, and dashed
fiercely down to the bars of its cage.

I thought of that urchin's scared, shrieking face now, as the rubicund
man leant quickly back into his corner.

Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied, perhaps, with its
victim's ignominy, turned and looked at me with a cynical smile. I was,
as it were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly
yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I may have simpered.

The train drew up in Great Hittenden station.

The woman gathered her priceless possession carefully into her arms, and
the rubicund man adroitly opened the door for her.

"Good day, sir," she said, as she got out.

"Good day," echoed the rubicund man with relief, and we all drew a deep
breath of relief with him in concert, as though we had just witnessed
the safe descent of some over-daring aviator.

IV

As the train moved on, we six, who had been fellow-passengers for some
thirty or forty minutes before the woman had entered our compartment, we
who had not till then exchanged a word, broke suddenly into general
conversation.

"Water on the brain; I don't care what any one says," asserted the
rubicund man.

"My sister had one very similar," put in the failure, who was sitting
next to me. "It died," he added, by way of giving point to his instance.

"Ought not to exhibit freaks like that in public," said an old man
opposite to me.

"You're right, sir," was the verdict of the artisan, and he spat
carefully and scraped his boot on the f