A GIRL WITH BROWN HAIR
III
Waterloo station is one of the things which no fellow can understand.
Thousands come to it, thousands go from it. Porters grow gray-headed
beneath its roof. Buns, once fresh and tender, become hard and
misanthropic in its refreshment rooms, and look as if they had seen
the littleness of existence and were disillusioned. But there the
station stands, year after year, wrapped in a discreet gloom, always
the same, always baffling and inscrutable. Not even the porters
understand it. "I couldn't say, sir," is the civil but unsatisfying
reply with which research is met. Now and then one, more gifted than
his colleagues, will inform the traveler that his train starts from
"No. 3 or No. 7," but a moment's reflection and he hedges with No. 12.
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