'You can easily catch it.'
Joseph's position was one of considerable weakness. On the one hand, it
would have been well to avoid the direct line of railway, since it was
there he might expect his nephews to lie in wait for his recapture; on
the other, it was highly desirable, it was even strictly needful, to get
the bill discounted ere it should be stopped. To London, therefore, he
decided to proceed on the first train; and there remained but one point
to be considered, how to pay his fare.
Joseph's nails were never clean; he ate almost entirely with his knife.
I doubt if you could say he had the manners of a gentleman; but he had
better than that, a touch of genuine dignity. Was it from his stay in
Asia Minor? Was it from a strain in the Finsbury blood sometimes
alluded to by customers? At least, when he presented himself before the
station-master, his salaam was truly Oriental, palm-trees appeared to
crowd about the little office, and the simoom or the bulbul--but I leave
this image to persons better acquainted with the East. His appearance,
besides, was highly in his favour; the uniform of Sir Faraday, however
inconvenient and conspicuous, was, at least, a costume in which no
swindler could have hoped to prosper; and the exhibition of a valuable
watch and a bill for eight hundred pounds completed what deportment had
begun.
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