“Tickets, please!”

The carriage door opens and the guard sounds his ringing warning. You rouse yourself and start the search for that vital piece of pasteboard. You at length turn out your pockets, unbutton your coat, and delve into your waistcoat. The guard moves nearer and the snip-snip of his clippers becomes louder. You turn to your overcoat pockets and then dip into your luggage, with growing annoyance.

The guard is standing right by you now. Grim and silent he waits patiently. You continue your frantic search, growing a little red in the face. Good heavens! To look at him anyone would think the guard suspected you didn't have a ticket and were trying to get the better of the Railways Department. You mumble some reassuring sentences, and go through the same pockets again.

You wonder if the guard will shortly lose his patience. You know he has supreme power. If you fail to produce your ticket he might stop the train and put you off unceremoniously somewhere in the great, open spaces among the rudely staring cows. Or he might even set you shovelling coal in the engine cab, as a stowaway at sea is forced to work his passage.

Ah! At last. Your fingers, probing each pocket, fasten on a slip of cardboard. With a gasp of relief you hand it over. But what is this? The guard hands back the card with a hollow, fiendish laugh.

“That's no good,” he says, with chilling finality.

And, really you must admit it is not much good, because as you stare at it dazedly you see it is only a cigarette card showing a teddy bear and a dog sitting together, and beneath the picture is the inscription: “There was a little man and he wooed a little maid.”

Very charming, of course, but with renewed vigour you plunge again into your pockets.

“Here we are,” says the guard, with a laugh, as he locates the elusive ticket in the band of your hat. Snip go his clippers. You are safe, but as the door slams on him you reflect that the places we choose as the safest are not the easiest to remember. And you have cause, too, to brood on the fact that a railway ticket is a tremendous trifle.