Bosom Friends

"Say, is it fate that has flung us together, We who from life's varied pathways thus meet?" IT was a broiling day at the end of July, and the railway station at Tiverton Junction was crowded with passengers. Porters wheeling great truckfuls of luggage strove to force a way along the thronged platform, anxious mothers held restless children firmly by the hand, harassed fathers sought to pack their families into already overflowing compartments, excited cyclists were endeavouring to disentangle their machines from among the piles of boxes and portmanteaus, a circus and a theatrical company were loud in their lamentations for certain reserved corridor carriages which had not arrived, while a patient band of Sunday-school teachers was struggling to keep together a large party of slum children bound for a sea-side camp.