One day a train was traveling through the English countryside. That was in the days when trains had small compartments, and in one particular compartment there were four people. There was a young girl, quite pretty, who looked like a student or someone who was starting her first job; there was an old lady, dressed in black with bags and magazines and knitting; there was an army officer in his mid-thirties, dressed in his uniform and proper in his manners; and finally there was a young cockney, casually dressed with sparkle in his eyes and ever ready to have a joke. It was quite obvious that both the men were attracted to the young girl, though they didn’t show it.
Suddenly the train went into a tunnel; the lights had not been on, so for half a minute the carriage was in complete darkness, and in the darkness came the sound of a large kiss followed almost immediately by a loud slap. What took place while the train was in the tunnel? When the train finally emerged and it was light again in the carriage, everybody saw the officer with a bleeding nose and a swollen eye.
And the old lady, seeing that, thought to herself: ‘What a brave young lady, who dared to hit the officer for stealing a kiss in such a cowardly way!’ And the young girl, seeing the suffering of the officer, was puzzled: ‘How strange”, she thought, ‘that the officer kissed the young old lady not me!’
The poor officer, having two injuries that caused him more than a little pain and embarrassment, considered to himself: ‘That cockney’s quite a clever chap! He kissed the girl and the girl hit me!’
And the cockney laughed silently to himself at the trick he had played. “I am a clever chap”, he thought to himself. ‘I kissed the back of my hand, hit the officer in the face and nobody said a word!’
The text is about …
four fellow passengers in the train
the English countryside
the officer’s suffering
the cockney’s trick in the train
