see you off!" he observed.

"None of whom?"

"None o' yer friends."

"No fear!" she said. "I wouldn't have it for anything. I do hate and
loathe good-byes at a railway station. Don't you?"

"Never had any," he said.

The train was prompt, but between Shawport and Crewe it suffered delays,
so that there was not an inordinate amount of time to spare at the
majestic junction.

Heedless, fly-away creature that she was, Helen scurried from the North
Stafford platform to the main-line platform without a thought as to her
luggage. She was apparently so preoccupied with her handbag, which
contained her purse, that she had no anxiety left over for her heavy
belongings.

As they hastened forward, he saw the luggage being tumbled out on to the
platform.

The Glasgow train rolled grandiosely in, and the restaurant-car came to
a standstill almost exactly opposite the end of the North Stafford
platform. They obtained two seats with difficulty. Then, as there was
five minutes to wait, Jimmy descended from the car to the asphalte and
peeped down the North Stafford platform. Yes, her luggage was lying
there, deserted, in a pile. He regained the carriage.

"I suppose the luggage will be all right?" Helen said, calmly, just as
the guard whistled.

"Ay!" said he, with the mien of a traveller of vast experience. "I saw
'em bringing all th' N.S. luggage over. It were th' fust thing I thought
of."

As a liar he reckoned he was pretty good.

He glanced from the window as the train slid away from Crewe, and out of
the tail of his eye, in the distance, over the heads of people, he had a
momentary glimpse of the topmost of Helen's trunks safely at rest on the
North Stafford platform.

He felt safe. He felt strangely joyous. He ate largely, and made very
dry, humorous remarks about the novelty of a restaurant on wheels.

"Bless us!" he said, as the express flashed through Preston without
stopping. "It's fust time as I've begun a bottle o' Bass in one town and
finished it in another."

He grew positively jolly, and the journey seemed to be accomplished with
the rapidity of a dream.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TOSSING

"You said you'd seen it into the van," pouted Helen--she who never
pouted!

"Nay, lass," he corrected her, "I said I'd seen 'em bringing all th'
luggage over."

The inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived. They stood together on
the platform of St. Enoch's, Glasgow. The last pieces of luggage were
being