He looked back to the empty opposite corner, and, though until that moment he had not really thought of Julia since he left Mr. Gillat yesterday, he put her there in imagination now. He did not want her there, he did not want her anywhere (there are some wines which a man does not want, that still rather spoil his taste for others). She would not have made the mistake of wearing such a hat; her clothes were not new, they were distinctly shabby sometimes, but they were well assorted. As to the boots--he remembered the day he tied her shoe--he could imagine the man she married, if he were very young and very foolish, of course, finding a certain pleasure in taking her arched foot, when it was pink and bare, in the hollow of his hand. If she were in that corner now, the quiet, twinkling smile would certainly be on her face as she listened to the talk of books, and men, and places, and things. He did not picture her joining even when they spoke of things she knew, and places she had been to--he remembered he had once heard her speak of a town which had been spoken of this afternoon. She had somehow grasped the whole life of the place, and laid it bare to him in a few words--the light-hearted gaiety and the sordid misery, the black superstition and the towering history which overhung it, and the cheerful commonplace which, like the street cries and the gutter streams, ran through it all--the whole flavour of the thing. The girl opposite had been to the place too; she told him of the historic spots she had visited; she knew a deal more about them than Julia did. She spoke of the quaint pottery to be bought there--it had not struck Julia as quaint, any more than it did its buyers and sellers. And she referred to the sayings and opinions of a great pose writer, who had expressed all he knew and felt and thought about it, and more besides. Julia, apparently, had not read him--what reading she had done seemed to be more in the direction of _Gil Blas_, and Dean Swift, and other kindred things in different languages.
The owner of the carnations glanced out of window, and commented on the scenery, which was here rather fine--Julia would not have done that; all the same, she would have known just what sort of country they had passed through all the way, not only when it was fine; she would have noticed the lie of the land, the style of work done there, the kind of lives lived there, even, possibly, the likely difficulties in the way of railway-making and bridge building. She would certainly have taken account of the faces on the platforms at which they drew up, so that without effort she could have picked out the porter who would give the best service; the stranger in need of help, and he who would offer it; and the guard most likely to be useful if it were necessary to cheat the company--it was conceivable that cheating companies might sometimes be necessary in her scheme of things.