to him. There were two of us in the railway carriage compartment on my
way down into Surrey. I made a number of amiable observations; I asked
a number of pleasant questions. My object was to while away the time
in human companionship. "Quite so," was his reply to observations.

In replying to questions he would commit himself to nothing; he
wouldn't even say that he didn't know. "I shouldn't undertake to say,
sir," was his answer. And then, certainly, there was no possibility of
pursuing the subject further.

He wasn't reading a paper; he wasn't doing anything but gaze straight
in front of him. I concluded that he was "sore" at me; I concluded
that he was a surly bear, anyway. And so an hour or so passed in utter
silence.

The pretty landscape whirled by; we went through a hundred tunnels
(more or less); the little engine gave a shrill little squeak now and
then; at old, old railway stations, that remind one agreeably of jails,
rough-looking men in black shirt sleeves and corduroy waistcoats ran
out to the train to open the carriage doors, and I forgot the gentleman
altogether. Till at length we came to his station.

When he had got out he turned to latch the door, and putting his head
in at the window, he said to me in the pleasantest manner possible:
"Good aufternoon, sir." He wasn't sore at me a bit! That was simply
his fashion of travelling, in silence.

I was going into the countryside, to the country places where the old
men have pleasant faces and the maidens quiet eyes. To fare forth upon
the King's highway, to hedgerows and blossoms and the old lanes of