elves, one another and the world at large.

A score or more of officers besieged a flustered girl standing beside a
pile of breakfast baskets, and the thin, keen morning air resounded
with banter and voices. The King's Messenger, freshly shaven and pink
of countenance (a woman once likened his face to that of a cherub
looked at through a magnifying glass), stood at the door of his
carriage and exchanged morning greetings with travellers of his
acquaintance. Then the guard's whistle sounded; the noise and laughter
redoubled along the platform and a general scramble ensued. Doors
slammed down the length of the train, and the damsel in charge of the
breakfast baskets raised her voice in lamentation.

"Ane o' the gentlemen hasna paid for his basket!" she cried. Heads
appeared at windows, and the owner of one extended a half-crown. "It's
my friend in here," he explained. "His name is Mouldy Jakes, and he
can't speak for himself because his mouth is too full of bacon; but he
wishes me to say that he's awfully sorry he forgot. He was struck all
of a heap at meeting a lady so early in the morning...." The speaker
vanished abruptly, apparently jerked backwards by some mysterious
agency. The train started.

The maiden turned away with a simper. "It was no his friend at all,"
she observed to the young lady from the buffet, who had emerged to wave
farewell to a bold, bad Engine Room Artificer after a desperate
flirtation of some forty seconds' duration. "It was himself."

"They're a' sae sonsie!" said the young lady from the buffet with a
rapturous sigh.

At the junction where the train stopped at noon, Naval occupation of
the North proclaimed itself. A Master-at-Arms, austere of visage and
stentorian voiced, fell upon the weary voyagers like a collie rallying
a flock of sheep. A Lieutenant-Commander of the Reserve, in a tattered
monkey-jacket, was superintending the unstowing of bags and hammocks by
a party of ancient mariners in white working rig and brown gaiters. A
retired Boatswain, who apparently bore the responsibilities of local
Traffic Superintendent upon his broad shoulders, held sage council with
the engine driver.

The travellers were still many weary hours from their destination, but
the solicitude of the great Mother Fleet for her sons' welfare was
plain on every side. There were evidences of a carefully planned,
wisely executed organisation in the speed with which the great crowd of
blue-jackets