Concerning a Certain Lady

This lady wears a blue serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy;
she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, and
she is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-looking
people. I go in terror of her. Yet the worm will turn at last, and so
will the mild, pacific literary man. Her last outrage was too much even
for my patience. It was committed at Gloucester Road Station the other
afternoon. I was about to get into a train for Wimbledon,--and there are
only two of them to the hour,--and, so far as I could see, the whole
world was at peace with me. I felt perfectly secure. The ægis of the
_pax Britannica_--if you will pardon the expression--was over me. For
the moment the thought of the lady in the blue serge was quite out of my
mind. I had just bought a newspaper, and had my hand on the carriage
door. The guard was fluttering his flag.

Then suddenly she swooped out of space, out of the infinite unknown, and
hit me. She always hits me when she comes near me, and I infer she hits
everyone she comes across. She hit me this time in the chest with her
elbow and knocked me away from the door-handle. She hit me very hard;
indeed, she was as fierce as I have ever known her. With her there were
two nieces and a nephew, and the nephew hit me too. He was a horrid
little boy in an Eton suit of the kind that they do not wear at Eton,
and he hit me with his head and pushed at me with his little pink hands.
The nieces might have been about twenty-two and thirteen respectively,
and I infer that they were apprenticed to her. All four people seemed
madly excited. "It's just starting!" they screamed, and the train was,
indeed, slowly moving. Their object--so far as they had an object and
were not animated by mere fury--appeared to be to assault me and then
escape in the train. The lady in blue got in and then came backwards out
again, sweeping the smaller girl behind her upon the two others, who
were engaged in hustling me. "It's 'smoking!'" she cried. I could have
told her that, if she had asked instead of hitting me. The elder girl,
by backing dexterously upon me, knocked my umbrella out of my hand, and
when I stooped to pick it up the little boy knocked my hat off. I will
confess they demoralised me with their archaic violence. I had some
thought of joining in their wild amuck, whooping, kicking out madly,
perhaps assaulting a porter,--I think the lady in blue would have been
surprised to find what an effective addition to her staff she had picked
up,--but before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to do any
definite thing the whole affair was over. A porter was slamming doors on
them, the train was running fast out of the station, and I was left
alone with