Three Men In A Boat.pdf - Bookstacks

of the street. Biggs’s boy hailed him:
“Hi! ground floor o’ 42’s a-moving.”
The grocer’s boy came across, and took up a position on the other
side of the step. Then the young gentleman from the boot-shop
stopped, and joined Biggs’s boy; while the empty-can superintendent
from “The Blue Posts” took up an independent position on the curb.
“They ain’t a-going to starve, are they?” said the gentleman from
the boot-shop.
“Ah! you’d want to take a thing or two with you,” retorted “The
Blue Posts,” “if you was a-going to cross the Atlantic in a small boat.”
“They ain’t a-going to cross the Atlantic,” struck in Biggs’s boy;
“they’re a-going to find Stanley.”
By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and people were
asking each other what was the matter. One party (the young and giddy
portion of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out
Harris as the bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among
the populace inclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was
probably the corpse’s brother.
At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a rule, and
when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rate of three a
minute, and hang about, and get in your way), and packing ourselves
and our belongings into it, and shooting out a couple of Montmorency’s
friends, who had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away
amidst the cheers of the crowd, Biggs’s boy shying a carrot after us for
luck.
We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five
started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does
know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does
start is going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things
thought it would go from number two platform, while another porter,
with whom he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it
would go from number one. The station-master, on the other hand,
was convinced it would start from the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the
traffic superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who
40