Ticket Booths and Pocket Watches

Steam whistles blared and hissed, trains chugged and screeched their way in and out of Paddington Station. Platform guards and conductors scurried in and out of ticket booths and offices, all screaming at the tops of their lungs and doing heavily exaggerated hand signals to black-faced train drivers and engineers impatiently waiting for passengers and cargo to be loaded. Businessmen, politicians, the odd chimney sweep, and laid-off factory workers lined the platforms, most of them glaring back and forth between station-mounted clocks and others, etched and engraved pocket watches. Rush hour, Callum sighed. A seemingly endless stream of people with places to go, funnelling in into two other ticket booths and then his own.

"Next." he mumbled, a word he says so many times in a day that it becomes more of a chore rather than a necessity.

He pulled his pocket watch out and set it out onto the booth counter, it read 3:17, he sighed in frustration, minutes ago he swore that it said 3:17 as well.

"Two tickets please-" a man, or women, it was around fifty late-forties, wearing a tight tunic or blouse with slim fitting breaches and hair tied back with a ribbon. "-for one adult and child." The man, or women, put four shillings onto the counter.

Callum opened up the ticket drawer, the only things that were left in the dusty draw were some buttons, some elderly tickets and a coupon of some sort to an opera in Germany, he rose from his chair and motioned towards the back of the booth after several tries with many different cabinets he turned back, the lady or man was missing, and so was his etched and engraved pocket watch.

"Oh bother!" he hissed.

He ran out of the booth to chase after the ne'er-do-well.

"Thief!"