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Updated: May 7, 2025
This very shabby man was quite close to the bookstall, while Mr Sandbach stood quite ten yards away. Mr Sandbach gazed steadily at the man, but the man, ignoring Mr Sandbach, allowed dreamy and abstracted eyes to rest on the far distance, where a locomotive or so was impatiently pushing and pulling waggons as an excitable mother will drag and shove an inoffensive child.
Mr Sandbach examined the coin, and then handed it to her, raising his hat. Mr Gale also raised his hat. The young lady's grateful smile was enchanting. Both men were bachelors and invariably ready to be interested. "It was the first money my husband ever earned," the young lady explained, with her thanks. The interest of the bachelors evaporated.
And he walked, with an undecided, longing, shrinking air, in the wake of the shabby man who had pocketed his half-sovereign. "Well, then, how do you explain it?" "I don't explain it," said Mr Sandbach. "I think some explanation is due to me," said Mr Gale, with a peculiar and dangerous intonation. "If this is your notion of a practical joke."
When Mr Gale read in a facetious paper an article on the lack of accurate observation in the average man, entitled, "Do 'bus horses wear blinkers?" his opening remark to Mr Sandbach at their next meeting was: "I say, Sandbach, do 'bus horses wear blinkers? Answer quick!" And a phrase constantly in their mouths was, "I'll try that on Gale;" or, "I wonder whether Sandbach knows that?"
What Mr Gale said was: "Don't you think that in fairness that half-sovereign belongs to me?" "Why?" asked Mr Sandbach, bluntly. "Well," Mr Gale began, searching about for a reason. "You didn't find it," Mr Sandbach proceeded firmly. "You didn't see it first. You didn't pick it up. Where do you come in?" "I'm seven and sixpence out," said Mr Gale.
"Well, try," said Mr Sandbach. Mr Sandbach and Mr Gale frequently threw down the glove to each other in this agreeable way. Either they asked conundrums, or they set test questions, or they suggested feats.
But one must not forget that he had made a solid gain of ten shillings. "The soles of the fellow's boots must have been all cracks, and it must have got lodged in one of them," cheerfully explained Mr Sandbach as he gazed with pleasure at the coin. "I hope you believe me now. You thought it was a plant. I hope you believe me now." Mr Gale made no response to this remark.
Such a spot was found by Colonel Sandbach of the Royal Engineers, and a strong working party was at once set to work to make a practicable approach. The point lay some three or four miles below Railway Hill, and the most formidable of the obstacles would therefore be turned.
The platform as a whole was sparsely peopled; the London train had recently departed, and the station was suffering from the usual reaction; only a local train was signalled. Mr Gale, a friend of Mr Sandbach's, came briskly on to the platform from the booking-office, caught sight of Mr Sandbach, and accosted him. "Hello, Sandbach!" "How do, Gale?"
Net result: Half-a-crown to the good." The shabby man, who could not have been a fool, comprehended at once, accepted the half-sovereign, and moved leisurely away not, however, without glancing at the ground which his feet had covered. The result of the scrutiny evidently much surprised him, as it surprised, in a degree equally violent, both Mr Gale and Mr Sandbach.
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