— FLORENCE FAULKNER “Oh, dear, now it all begins again,” thought Miss Faulkner, scampering along the platform with her usual smile of sprightly welcome. She had a mixed collection of books and papers under her arm. She nearly always had. And she was nearly always smiling, or scampering, or both. The clanking carriages drew slowly in, pulled by an electric engine that stood at the far end ticking like an enormous clock. Faces appeared at windows—windows that bore the labels of an English travel organisation, and Miss Faulkner, still scampering, shouted out: “Hello, everybody—is the train early, or am I late?” which was the kind of remark which, in her estimation, put people at their ease immediately and helped them to begin a holiday in the right spirit. The train was from Calais; its passengers had been travelling all night and the day before. The women looked heavy-eyed and bedraggled, the men were blue-chinned after two days without a shave. They came from the vague hinterlands of suburb and provinces, urged across eight hundred miles of land and water by an enterprise which was not their own, but that of a limited liability company working for profit and earning (in normal years) some fifteen per cent.
