"Oh, are we in Belgium," I replied sleepily; "I thought we were in Germany. I didn't know." And then, in a burst of confidence, I added, feeling that further deceit was useless, "I don't know where I am, you know."
"No, I thought you didn't," he replied. "That is exactly the idea you give anybody. I wish you'd wake up a bit."
We waited about an hour at Ostend, while our train was made up. There was only one carriage labelled for Cologne, and four more passengers wanted to go there than the compartment would hold.
Not being aware of this, B. and I made no haste to secure places, and, in consequence, when, having finished our coffee, we leisurely strolled up and opened the carriage door we saw that every seat was already booked. A bag was in one space and a rug in another, an umbrella booked a third, and so on. Nobody was there, but the seats were gone!
It is the unwritten law among travellers that a man's luggage deposited upon a seat, shall secure that seat to him until he comes to sit upon it himself. This is a good law and a just law, and one that, in my normal state, I myself would die to uphold and maintain.
But at three o'clock on a chilly morning one's moral sensibilities are not properly developed. The average man's conscience does not begin work till eight or nine o'clock—not till after breakfast, in fact. At three a.m. he will do things that at three in the afternoon his soul would revolt at.
Under ordinary circumstances I should as soon have thought of shifting a man's bag and appropriating his seat as an ancient Hebrew squatter would have thought
