There were several of us, strangers to each other, who hitherto had been minding our own business, but under the stress of this untoward thing became companionable.

A man at each window craned his body out, but withdrew it without information.

“I hope,” said another, “there’s not an accident.”

“I have always heard,” said a fourth, “that in a railway accident presence of mind is not so valuable as absence of body”—­getting off this ancient pleasantry as though it were his own.

The motionlessness of the train was so absolute as to be disconcerting; also a scandal.  The business of trains, between stations, is to get on.  We had paid our money, not for undue stoppages, but for movement in the direction of our various goals; and it was infamous.

Somebody said something of the kind.

“Better be held up now,” said a sententious man, “than be killed for want of prudence.”

No one was prepared to deny this, but we resented its truth and availed ourselves of a true-born free Briton’s right to doubt the wisdom of those in authority.  We all, in short, looked as though we knew better than engine-driver, signalman or guard.  That is our metier.

Some moments, which, as in all delays on the line, seemed like hours, passed and nothing happened.  Looking out I saw heads and shoulders protruding from every window, with curiosity stamped on all their curves.

“They should tell us what’s the matter,” said an impatient man.  “That’s one of the stupid things in England—­no one ever tells you what’s wrong.  No tact in this country—­no imagination.”

We all agreed.  No imagination.  It was the national curse.

“And yet,” said another man with a smile, “we get there.”

“Ah! that’s our luck,” said the impatient man.  “We have luck far beyond our deserts.”  He was very cross about it.

Again the first man to speak hoped it was not an accident; and again the second man, fearing that someone might have missed it, repeated the old jest about presence of mind and absence of body.

“Talking of presence of mind,” said a man who had not yet spoken, emerging from his book, “an odd thing happened to me not so very long ago—­since the War—­and, as it chances, happened in a railway carriage too—­as it might be in this.  It is a story against a friend of mine, and I hope he’s wiser now, but I’ll tell it to you.”

We had not asked for his story but we made ourselves up to listen.

“It was during the early days of the War,” he said, “before some of us had learned better, and my friend and I were travelling to the North.  He is a very good fellow, but a little hasty, and a little too much disposed to think everyone wrong but himself.  Opposite us was a man hidden behind a newspaper, all that was visible of him being a huge pair of legs in knickerbockers, between which was a bag of golf-clubs.