Never since marriage had he taken a holiday alone—­never desired to do so.  He felt himself to be on the edge of romance.  Frinton, for example, presented itself as a city of romance.  He knew it not, knew scarcely any English seaside, having always managed to spend his holidays abroad; but Frinton must, he was convinced, be strangely romantic.  The train thither had an aspect which strengthened this conviction.  It consisted largely of first-class coaches, and in the window of nearly every first-class compartment and saloon was exhibited a notice:  “This compartment (or saloon) is reserved for members of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association.”  Mr. Prohack, being still somewhat swollen, decided that he was a member of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association and acted accordingly.  Otherwise he might never have reached Frinton.

He found himself in a sort of club, about sixty feet by six, where everybody knew everybody except Mr. Prohack, and where cards and other games, tea and other drinks, tobacco and other weeds, were being played and consumed in an atmosphere of the utmost conviviality.  Mr. Prohack was ignored, but he was not objected to.  His fellow-travellers regarded him cautiously, as a new chum.  The head attendant and dispenser was very affable, as to a promising neophyte.  Only the ticket-inspector singled him out from all the rest by stopping in front of him.

“My last hour has come,” thought Mr. Prohack as he produced his miserable white return-ticket.

All stared; the inspector stared; but nothing happened.  Mr. Prohack had a sense of reprieve, and also of having been baptised or inducted into a secret society.  He listened heartily to forty conversations about physical diversions and luxuries and about the malignant and fatuous wrong-headedness of men who went on strike, and about the approaching catastrophic end of all things.

Meanwhile, at any rate in the coach, the fabric of society seemed to be holding together fairly well.  Before the train was half-way to Frinton Mr. Prohack judged—­and rightly—­that he was already there.  The fact was that he had been there ever since entering the saloon.  After two hours the train, greatly diminished in length, came to rest in the midst of a dark flatness, and the entire population of the coach vanished out of it in the twinkling of an eye, and Mr. Prohack saw the name ‘Frinton’ on a flickering oil-lamp, and realised that he was at the gates of the most fashionable resort in England, a spot where even the ozone was exclusive.  The station staff marvelled at him because he didn’t know where the Majestic Hotel was and because he asked without notice for a taxi, fly, omnibus or anything on wheels.  All the other passengers had disappeared.  The exclusive ozone was heavy with exciting romance for Mr. Prohack as the station staff considered his unique and incomprehensible case.  Then a tiny omnibus materialised out of the night.