Nigel Browning

"HERE, I want this luggage taken—Hallo, Pollard! You're the man for me."

"Mr. Nigel Browning!" ejaculated the porter addressed, a huge individual six feet three in height, and massive in frame, with a large face, resplendently good-humoured. He had been heaving great trunks and packing-cases out of the van, tossing one upon another, as a girl might heap together a pile of band-boxes. Now the train passed on groaning dismally after the fashion of these modern behemoths; and the platform crowd began to disperse.

It was past nine o'clock on a chilly autumn evening: not the kind of evening which might tempt anybody to linger under the flaring gas-lights, dimmed by fogginess.

Pollard, in full career across the platform, brought up his truck with a jerk on hearing his own name, then plucked at his cap with an air of delight.

"Mr. Nigel Browning!" he exclaimed.

"To be sure. Whom else would you take me for? Shake hands, Pollard. I've been round the world since I saw you last."

The man's hard palm closed with a grip round the fingers held out to him.

"And you ain't changed, Mr. Nigel. No need for to ask that, though. If you was, you wouldn't be a-shaking hands with me here, like to old days. And the niggers ain't got hold of you, nor none of they cannibals neither."