The words came in aptly enough, but the voice was not that of Clara, and both ladies turned in some surprise to see who it was that had so suddenly struck into their conversation. A fat little old lady was standing at the door of a cab, helping the driver to extricate what seemed an exact duplicate of herself: it would have been no easy task to decide which was the fatter or which looked the more good-humoured of the two sisters.
`I tell you the cab-door isn't half wide enough!' she repeated, as her sister finally emerged, somewhat after the fashion of a pellet from a pop-gun, and she turned to appeal to Clara. `Is it, dear?' she said, trying hard to bring a from into a face that dimpled all over with smiles.
`Some folks is too wide for 'em,' growled the cab-driver.
`Don't provoke me, man!' cried the little old lady, in what she meant for a tempest of fury. `Say another word and I'll put you into the County Court and sue you for a Habeas Corpus!' the cabman touched his hat, and marched off, grinning.
`Nothing like a little Law to cow the ruffians, my dear!' she remarked confidentially to Clara. `You saw how he quailed when I mentioned the Habeas Corpus? Not that I've any idea what it means, but it sounds very grand, doesn't it?'
`It's very provoking,' Clara replied, a little vaguely.
`Very!' the little old lady eagerly replied. `And we're very much provoked indeed. Aren't we, sister?'
`I never was so provoked in all my life!' the fatter sister assented radiantly.
By this time Clara had recognized her picture-gallery acquaintances, and, drawing her aunt aside, she hastily whispered her reminiscences. `I met them first in the Royal Academy--and they were very kind to me--and they were lunching at the next table to us, just now, you know--and they tried to help me to find the picture I wanted--and I'm sure they're dear old things!'
`Friends of yours, are they?' said Mad Mathesis. `Well I like their looks. You can be civil to them, while I get the tickets. But do try and arrange your ideas a little more chronologically!'
And so it came to pass that the four ladies found themselves seated side by side on the same bench waiting for the train, and chatting as if they had known one another for years.
`Now this I call quite a remarkable coincidence!' exclaimed the smaller and more talkative of the two sisters--the one whose legal knowledge had annihilated the cab-driver. `Not only that we should be waiting for the same train, and at the same station--that would be curious enough--but actually on the same day, and the same hour of the day! That's what strikes me so forcibly!' She glanced at the fatter and more silent sister, whose chief function in life seemed to be to support the family opinion, and who meekly responded:
`And me too, sister!'
`Those are not independent coincidences--' Mad Mathesis was just beginning, when Clara ventured to interpose.
`There's no jolting here,' she pleaded meekly. `Would you mind writing it down now?'
Out came the ivory tablets once more. `What was it, then?' said her aunt.
`One glass of lemonade, one sandwich, one biscuit--Oh, dear me!' cried poor Clara, the historical tone suddenly changing to a wail of agony.