WHAT HAPPENED WHILE THE TRAIN WAS IN THE TUNNEL?

One day, a few years ago, a train was travelling through the English countryside. This 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, immaculately dressed in his uniform and very stiff and proper in his manner; and finally there was a young cockney, casually dressed with a sparkle in his eye and ever ready to have joke. It was quite obvious that both the men were attracted to the young girl, though the officer certainly wouldn’t show it and the cockney felt inhibited by the presence of the others.

Suddenly the train went into a tunnel; the lights had not been put 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 had taken place while the train was in the tunnel? When the train finally emerged and it was light again in the carriage, there for all to see was the officer with a bleeding nose and swollen eye. And the old lady, seeing this, 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 should kiss the old lady, not me!”

The poor officer, nursing 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!”

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 2324