Read "Sink or Swim? , Volume I" by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A fortnight, minus two days, had passed since John Beacham was married, / and once more, on the occasion of the return of the bride and bridegroom / to their home, all Switcham was on the tiptoe of expectation. At the / little wayside station, almost a private one for the accommodation of / "the Castle," few trains throughout the day were in the habit of / stopping. There was one at 7.10 P. M., a fact to which the time-table and / _Bradshaw_, those sworn enemies to indiscreet surprises, bore useful / witness; and as by that train the bridal party was by the Switchamites / fully expected to arrive, a considerable crowd had (when the down / passengers were due) assembled round and about the station, ready, with / more heartiness than good taste, to bestow on the returned travellers a / noisy and a cordial welcome home.
Meanwhile John and his pretty wife had spent the greater part of the day / in London, enjoying, amongst other inexpensive pleasures, the / apparently inexhaustible one of looking in at the tempting windows of / the West-end shops. It was Saturday afternoon, and the carriages, as was / usual on that day, were pretty well filled with passengers. Honor and / her husband had already taken their places, the first bell had been / rung, and only one seat remained unappropriated in the compartment which / they occupied, when a handsome, distinguished-looking young man, whose / face Honor thought she had seen before, came slowly sauntering along the / platform. He glanced in a careless manner towards the carriages as he / passed, but his eye chancing to catch sight of John's honest sun-burnt / face, he stopped, and nodding familiarly, asked the latter if there was / a vacant place.