MY SUNDAY AT HOME
population of England he had read so much about? What was the rank of all those men on tricycles along the roads? When were we due at Plymouth?
I told him all I knew, and very much that I did not. He was going to Plymouth to assist in a consultation upon a fellow-countryman who had retired to a place called The Hoe—was that up-town or down-town?—to recover from nervous dyspepsia. Yes, he himself was a doctor by profession, and how any one in England could retain any nervous disorder passed his comprehension. Never had he dreamed of an atmosphere so soothing. Even the deep rumble of London traffic was monastical by comparison with some cities he could name; and the country—why, it was Paradise. A continuance of it, he confessed, would drive him mad; but for a few months it was the most sumptuous rest-cure in his knowledge.
"I 'll come over every year after this," he said, in a burst of delight, as we ran between two ten-foot hedges of pink and white may. "It 's seeing all the things I 've ever read about. Of course it does n't strike you that way. I presume you belong here? What a finished land it is! It 's arrived. 'Must have been born this way. Now, where I used to live— Hello! what 's up?"
The train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at Framlynghame Admiral, which is made up entirely of the name-board, two platforms, and an overhead bridge, without even the usual siding. I had never known the slowest of locals stop here before; but on Sunday all things are possible to the London and Southwestern. One could hear the drone of conversation along the carriages, and,
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