dashed clever guess I ever knew
Jenkins to get off! Fact! I knew that if there was one thing more than
another in all the world that I wanted to do, it was to take that
four-ten express. To think of seeing Frances again, and _to-day_!

Of course, it was quite clear that Billings must have anticipated the
possibility of something unusual, and that was why he had impressed a
sort of personal responsibility upon Jenkins--kind of tipping him off,
as it were, so he would be sure to see that I got off in case he did not
show up himself. It was very easy to see this, especially as Jenkins saw
it that way, too, but what made it specially so awfully jolly easy to
see was the fact that I _wanted_ to go, you know.

So I let Jenkins shoot a wire up to Billings, stating my train, and I
just had to chuckle as in my mind's eye I saw old brazen face Jack
coming down to the station to meet me, and just ignoring his going off
in the middle of the night in my pajamas. By Jove, perhaps he would
bring _her_ down to the train in his car, so I would be sure not to ask
him any questions!

I left Jenkins to travel by a later train, and a little after four I was
whirling above Spuyten Duyvil and looking about the chair-car to see if
there was any one I knew. But, by Jove, there was hardly a soul in the
car--nobody except just women, you know, and these filled the whole
place. And they were talking about all sorts of dashed silly things.
Most of them were devilish pretty as the word goes, but, of course, not
a patch on _her_. Oh, well, of course, they _couldn't_ be that! Don't
know how they were behind me, you know--too much trouble to turn round
and fix my glass. So I just took the range in front, looking at the tops
of the hats and the chairs and wondering if women would ever become
extinct like that bird--the great what's-its-name, you know.

"By Jove, _she_ could be spared!" I thought, studying a young woman who
stood in the aisle beside me. She was rather heavy set--what you might
call egg-shaped. Her face and her heavy glasses seemed to proclaim a
mission in life, and the dowdyish cut of her rig and the reckless way it
was hurled on made it plain that she was on to the fact that nature had
made a blunder in her sex, and she wanted the world to _know_ she knew.

She was talking to the lady immediately behind me. At least, I
discovered after five minutes that she was talking. By Jove, up to that
time, I thought she was canvassing for a bo