im, "I'm going away, I'm going away, I'm going
away."

The train was advertised to go at 2.22, and at 2.20 Ronald joined the
Easter holiday crowd upon the platform. A porter put down his luggage
and was then swallowed up in a sea of perambulators and flustered
parents. Ronald never saw him again. At 2.40, amidst some applause, the
train came in.

Ronald seized a lost porter.

"Just put these in for me," he said. "A first smoker."

"All this lot yours, Sir?"

"The three bags--not the milk-cans," said Ronald.

It had been a beautiful day before, but when a family of sixteen which
joined Ronald in his carriage was ruthlessly hauled out by the guard,
the sun seemed to shine with a warmth more caressing than ever. Even
when the train moved out of the station and the children who had been
mislaid emerged from their hiding-places and were bundled in anywhere by
the married porters, Ronald still remained splendidly alone. And the sky
took on yet a deeper shade of blue.

He lay back in his corner, thinking. For a time his mind was occupied
with the thoughts common to most of us when we go away--thoughts of all
the things we have forgotten to pack. I don't think you could fairly
have called Ronald over-anxious about clothes. He recognised that it was
the inner virtues which counted; that a well-dressed exterior was
nothing without some graces of mind or body. But at the same time he did
feel strongly that, if you are going to stay at a house where you have
never visited before, and if you are particularly anxious to make a
good impression, it _is_ a pity that an accident of packing should force
you to appear at dinner in green knickerbockers and somebody else's
velvet smoking-jacket.

Ronald couldn't help feeling that he had forgotten something. It wasn't
the spare sponge; it wasn't the extra shaving-brush; it wasn't the
second pair of bedroom slippers. Just for a moment the sun went behind a
cloud as he wondered if he had included the reserve razor-strop; but no,
he distinctly remembered packing that.

The reason for his vague feeling of unrest was this. He had been
interrupted while getting ready that afternoon; and, as he left whatever
he had been doing in order to speak to his housekeeper, he had said to
himself, "If you're not careful, you'll forget about that when you come
back." And now he could not remember what it was he had been doing, nor
whether he _had_ in the end forgotten to go on with it. Was he selecti