"I wonder," said Mary for the third time, "if we shall catch the tram at
the other end."
"Calmness," I told her--this for the second time--"is the essence of
comfortable travel. Meeting trouble half-way--"
"It isn't half-way," she said indignantly. "We're nearly there."
We were on a bus whose "route" terminated some five miles from home, which
we proposed to reach by a tram, and, the hour being late, it was our
chances of catching a car that were worrying Mary.
"Never get flurried," I went on. "If people would only go ahead calmly and
steadily.... What causes half our traffic congestion? Flurry. What makes it
so difficult to move quickly in the streets? Flurry. What is it clogs the
wheels of progress everywhere?"
"Don't tell me," she implored. "Let me guess. Flurry."
"Exactly," I said, and at this point we reached our terminus. Two trams
were waiting, one behind the other, some thirty yards away, and, as we
descended the steps of the bus, the bell of the first one rang warningly.
Mary would have started running, but I detained her.
"Flurrying again," I said indulgently. "Here are two trams, but of course
you must have the first one, however full it is," and I led her towards the
second. As I expected, it was quite empty, and I was still using it to
point my moral when its conductor began juggling with the pole. It was then
that I realised that, though on the down lines, this car was going no
further. It was, in fact, turning round for its journey back to London,
while in the distance the rear lights of our last down tram seemed to wink
a derisive farewell.
There was nothing for it but to go ahead calmly and steadily, and we did
so. It was somewhere about the end of the fourth mile that Mary asked
suddenly:--
"What was it you said clogged the wheels of progress everywhere?"
"Flurry," I said feebly.
"Well, _I_ think it's blisters," she said.
* * * * *