Someone in the railway carriage had talked of an engine
called _Brutus_, which (it appeared) had lately run away and crashed
into the cloak-room at the end of the platform. He still thought of
railway engines as big, blundering animals, with wills of their own,
and of Plymouth as a town rendered insecure by their vagaries; but
the idea that its roofs covered girls dressed up like boys and
policemen on slides was new to him, and pleasant on the whole, though
daunting.
"Will you give my thanks to Sir Harry," said Mr. Raymond, after
lessons, "and tell him that Taffy may go."
So on New Year's Day Taffy found himself in Plymouth. It was an
experience which he could never fit into his life except as a gaudy
interlude; for when he awoke and looked back upon it, he was no
longer the boy who had climbed up beside Sir Harry and behind Sir
Harry's restless pair of bays. The whirl began with that drive to
the station; began again in the train; began again as they stepped
out on the pavement at Plymouth, just as a company of scarlet-coated
soldiers came down the roadway with a din of brazen music.
The crowd, the shops, the vast hotel, completely dazed him, and he
seriously accepted the waiter, in his black suit and big white
shirt-front, as a contribution to the fun of the entertainment.
"We must dine early," Sir Harry announced at lunch; "the Pantomime
begins at seven.
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