CHANCE ENCOUNTER
Stopping to await my turn at the level crossing, I put my head out of the car window and asked the old fellow when the train was due. It couldn't be by the mere whim of - the porter-cum-signalman-station- master that we were being kept here? No, the old fellow said. The train was due and the signal had been given. Did he not remember my face? he inquired. I looked hard at him. Long ago, he said, on a warm summer's day up the hill at the little lake where the mallard nested? Had I not been fishing for rudd, poking my rod through a gap in the over- hanging trees and cursing the flies that buzzed about my ears? I looked again and remembered that after- noon and our talk about rudd and roach, and what good bait for pike a young rudd makes. I wondered how he remembered me when I had forgotten him.
he said, 'that ole fly in your cap brung 'it back an' didn't we stop 'ere an' wet our whistles that very 'ot day?'; but there was no chance to renew our acquaintance. The train had steamed through and the gates had been opened and we parted again, for good, who knows?
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