Never Trust Appearances.docVIP

Never Trust Appearances Rush hour in a provincial town is certainly not so busy as in London, but even so there are plenty of people moving about. Long patient queues wait wearily for buses. Never-ending lines of cars are checked while red traffic lights change to green. Thousands of people are packed tightly in trains, the mens faces buried in their evening papers while women try in vain to knit. In a slow train it may well be an hours journey to their station. James Saxon is in his usual comfortable corner, quietly smoking a cigarette. When he is travelling by train at this time, he always reaches the station at ten past five by the station clock, but he never catches the 5:14 train. Instead he travels by the train which leaves at twenty-four minutes past five so as to be sure of getting his corner seat. There are no first-class compartments of reserved seats on this train. He appears to be absorbed in the sports news on the back page of his paper and ignores the hurrying crowds. Facing him this evening there is a Finnish youth of eighteen, Matti Arpola. This is his first visit of England, though he already knows Geoffrey, the eldest son of the Jackson family, with whom he is going to stay. As there are several people standing, James Saxon is the only person he can see clearly. Matti decides that he is probably a typical Englishman, and he observes James carefully. Can he really be typical? he thinks. He has an umbrella, neatly rolled, but no bowler hat; in fact, no hat at all. Of course, he is reading about cricket and he is reserved and not interested in other people. But he is only of average height and his hair is not fair, but as dark as that of an Italian, and curly, with almost no parting. He is not smoking a pipe, and although we foreigners think that a real English man ought to have a moustache, he is clean-shaven. His nose is slightly crooked. What a serious face he has! He is frowning a little, but the eyes beneath his worried-looking forehead are