'I wonder what can make him so cantankerous?' reflected the nephew. 'I

don't like the look of it at all.' And he dubiously scratched his nose.

The train travelled forth into the world, bearing along with it the

customary freight of obliterated voyagers, and along with these old

Joseph, affecting immersion in his paper, and John slumbering over

the columns of the Pink Un, and Morris revolving in his mind a dozen

grudges, and suspicions, and alarms. It passed Christchurch by the sea,

Herne with its pinewoods, Ringwood on its mazy river. A little behind

time, but not much for the South-Western, it drew up at the platform of

a station, in the midst of the New Forest, the real name of which (in

case the railway company 'might have the law of me') I shall veil under

the alias of Browndean.

Many passengers put their heads to the window, and among the rest an old

gentleman on whom I willingly dwell, for I am nearly done with him now,

and (in the whole course of the present narrative) I am not in the least

likely to meet another character so decent. His name is immaterial, not

so his habits. He had passed his life wandering in a tweed suit on the

continent of Europe; and years of Galignani's Messenger having at length

undermined his eyesight, he suddenly remembered the rivers of Assyria

and came to London to consult an oculist. From the oculist to the

dentist, and from both to the physician, the step appears inevitable;

presently he was in the hands of Sir Faraday, robed in ventilating cloth

and sent to Bournemouth; and to that domineering baronet (who was his

only friend upon his native soil) he was now returning to report. The

The Wrong Box