"One
moment, please, till I make a note. 'All clergy--I think
you said _all_, did you not?--drunk at seven in the
morning.' Deplorable! But here we are at the Union
Station--commodious, is it not? Justly admired, in fact,
all over the known world. Observe," he continued as we
alighted from the train and made our way into the station,
"the upstairs and the downstairs, connected by flights
of stairs; quite unique and most convenient: if you don't
meet your friends downstairs all you have to do is to
look upstairs. If they are not there, you simply come
down again. But stop, you are going to walk up the street?
I'll go with you."
At the outer door of the station--just as I had remembered
it--stood a group of hotel bus-men and porters.
But how changed!
They were like men blasted by a great sorrow. One, with
his back turned, was leaning against a post, his head
buried on his arm.
"Prince George Hotel," he groaned at intervals. "Prince
George Hotel."
Another was bending over a little handrail, his head
sunk, his arms almost trailing to the ground.
"_King Edward_," he sobbed, "_King Edward_."
A third, seated on a stool, looked feebly up, with tears
visible in his eyes.
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