Country Cousin, bound for Bayswater, to ticket clerk, with scrupulous politeness. If you please, I want a first-class ticket to Bayswater.

Ticket Clerk (abruptly). No first-class here. Go to the next booking-place.

[Country Cousin retires rebuffed, and finds his way to next booking-place.

Country Cousin. If you please, I want a first-class ticket to Bayswater.

Ticket Clerk (explosively). Single or return? Look sharp! You're not the only person in London!

Country Cousin (humbly). Single, please.

[The ticket and change are slapped down unceremoniously, and Country Cousin is shoved on from behind by an impatient City man. Rushes precipitately down brass-bound steps, and presents his ticket to be snipped.

Snipper (inspecting ticket). Queen's Road, Bayswater? Wrong side! Go up the stairs, and turn to the right. Look sharp! There's a train just coming in!

[Country Cousin, with a deepened sense of humiliation and bewilderment, hurries upstairs, turns to the right, and reaches entrance to platform just in time to have gate slammed in his face. The train being gone, gate is re-opened, and the necessary snipping performed on his ticket.

Country Cousin (to Snipper, politely). If you please—will the next train take me to Queen's Road, Bayswater?

Saturnine Official. Can't tell you till the train comes.

[Country Cousin paces the platform in moody silence, and wishes he had taken a cab. Enter train, rushing madly along.

Stentorian voice (without stops). Earl's Court North End and Hammersmith train first and second-class forward third behind!

[Country Cousin makes his way towards a carriage, but finds it full. Tries another with the same result, and is frantically endeavouring to open the door of a third-class compartment in which there is one vacant seat next a fat woman with a baby, when train moves on.

Indignant Official. Stand away there! Stand away, will you! (Drags back Country Cousin.) That ain't your train! What do you want a-tryin to get in there for?

[Country Cousin, in deeper humiliation, re-arranges dress, disturbed by recent struggle and resumes his agitated march.

Enter another train more madly than the first.

Stentorian voice. High Street Kensington Notting Hill Gate and Bayswater train main line train!

Country Cousin (to Haughty Official, in an agony of entreaty). Is this train for Queen's Road, Bayswater?

Haughty Official. Yes, Queen's Road. Look sharp! She'll be off in a minute.

[Country Cousin scrambles through the crowd to a carriage; drops his umbrella; stoops to pick it up and on rising finds train three parts through the tunnel. Exit Country Cousin in a rage, to get a cab, having lost twenty minutes, the price of his unused ticket, his self-respect, and that of everybody he has come in contact with in the Metropolitan District Railway Station.

Shrewd Clerk (with an eye to his percentage). "Take an accident insurance ticket, sir?"

Passenger (nervously). "Wha' for?!"

Clerk. "Well, sir, nothing has gone wrong 'twixt this and London for the last fourteen months; and, by the haverages, the next smash on the hup line is hoverdue exactly six weeks and three days!!"

[Old Gent forks out with alacrity.