360 QUESTIONS A DAY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3139, 16 October 1922, Page 8

360 QUESTIONS A DAY.

(By Martin Puich). She sits oil her perch with the telephone beside her, and all the timetables in the world arranged in a neat row behind. Reckon one u minute from ten to five, with an hour (I hope) for lunch. That makes 360 questions a day—she does all that. Queries rain on her at busy times as thick as the sticks that hurtle round Aunt Sally at a. fair; and the question has yet to be framed that will knock hoi- off her perch. She has all the geography ol England packed away underneath her neat crown of dark-brown hair. That is the most remarkable point about her- her hair. I mean, she never loses it. She is the little human finger-post, pointing holiday-makers along all the roads that lead to the blue soas, golden beaches, and the green glory of rural England. Not the highways only, but 'the most twisting rustic; byways us well—she points the way along them all, She is the girl who presides, at a. great London terminus, over the office marked "Inquiries'." And they are "some" inquiries! It they were just "How do I get to Penzance?" she would not want a minute a question. She would rap out the time of the train, the platform, the time of arrival, and the fare in one brief sentence (containing no verbs) without moving a. graceful eyebrow. But what she gains on the swings she loses on the roundabouts, and it takes more than a minutes sometimes to answer a question like this:— "You see, missy, I thought of going down to Tavistock—my boy Jim (the one that's married) lives there, you. know; and then, if it wasn't too expensive, I thought I might go on to Weston-super-Mare to see Agnes—the one that married my brother Tom, as lost his foot in the war. And p'raps, if you could do it for the money—let's see, I daresay 1 could spare five pound ten for the lot of it—l'd go on. if it's agreeable to you. to Stafford (my old Aunt Betty keeps a toy shop there) and come back by way of Birmingham, because Bert (my other brother, not the married one) is going to get married himself soon, and I might see the young lady." There isn't even a frown across her forehead when she hops off her perch at closing time. But I do hope her family don't ask her questions when she gets home. Three hundred and sixty questions a day—and promptness and civility (as the bookmakers say) all the lime!

What an R.T.O. she would have made in the great war.