Mugby Junction / Charles Dickens

CHAPTER I--BARBOX BROTHERS

I.

"Guard! What place is this?"

"Mugby Junction, sir."

"A windy place!"

"Yes, it mostly is, sir."

"And looks comfortless indeed!"

"Yes, it generally does, sir."

"Is it a rainy night still?"

"Pours, sir."

"Open the door. I'll get out."

"You'll have, sir," said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, and

looking at the tearful face of his watch by the light of his lantern as

the traveller descended, "three minutes here."

"More, I think.--For I am not going on."

"Thought you had a through ticket, sir?"

"So I have, but I shall sacrifice the rest of it. I want my luggage."

"Please to come to the van and point it out, sir. Be good enough to look

very sharp, sir. Not a moment to spare."

The guard hurried to the luggage van, and the traveller hurried after

him. The guard got into it, and the traveller looked into it.

"Those two large black portmanteaus in the corner where your light

shines. Those are mine."

"Name upon 'em, sir?"

"Barbox Brothers."

"Stand clear, sir, if you please. One. Two. Right!"

Lamp waved. Signal lights ahead already changing. Shriek from engine.

Train gone.

"Mugby Junction!" said the traveller, pulling up the woollen muffler

round his throat with both hands. "At past three o'clock of a

tempestuous morning! So!"

He spoke to himself. There was no one else to speak to. Perhaps, though

there had been any one else to speak to, he would have preferred to speak

to himself. Speaking to himself he spoke to a man within five years of

fifty either way, who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire; a

man of pondering habit, brooding carriage of the head, and suppressed

internal voice; a man with many indications on him of having been much

alone.

He stood unnoticed on the dreary platform, except by the rain and by the

wind. Those two vigilant assailants made a rush at him. "Very well,"

said he, yielding. "It signifies nothing to me to what quarter I turn my

face."

Thus, at Mugby Junction, at past three o'clock of a tempestuous morning,

the traveller went where the weather drove him.

Not but what he could make a stand when he was so minded, for, coming to

the end of the roofed shelter (it is of considerable extent at Mugby

Junction), and looking out upon the dark night, with a yet darker spirit-

wing of storm beating its wild way through it, he faced about, and held

his own as ruggedly in the difficult direction as he had held it in the

easier one. Thus, with a steady step, the traveller went up and down, up

and down, up and down, seeking nothing and finding it.

A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the black

hours of the four-and-twenty. Mysterious goods trains, covered with

palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves

guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if their

freight had come to a secret and unlawful end. Half-miles of coal

pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead, stopping when

they stop, backing when they back. Red-hot embers showering out upon the

ground, down this dark avenue, and down the other, as if torturing fires

were being raked clear; concurrently, shrieks and groans and grinds

invading the ear, as if the tortured were at the height of their

suffering. Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the

drooping beasts with horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, and mouths

too: at least they have long icicles (or what seem so) hanging from their

lips. Unknown languages in the air, conspiring in red, green, and white

characters. An earthquake, accompanied with thunder and lightning, going

up express to London. Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in

possession, lamps extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with

its robe drawn over its head, like Caesar.

Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy train

went by him in the gloom which was no other than the train of a life.

From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark tunnel it emerged, here

it came, unsummoned and unannounced, stealing upon him, and passing away

into obscurity. Here mournfully went by a child who had never had a

childhood or known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense

of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best

years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful

friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a

clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim

disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of

a solitary and unhappy existence.

"--Yours, sir?"

The traveller recalled his eyes from the waste into which they had been

staring, and fell back a step or so under the abruptness, and perhaps the

chance appropriateness, of the question.

"Oh! My thoughts were not here for the moment. Yes. Yes. Those two

portmanteaus are mine. Are you a Porter?"

"On Porter's wages, sir. But I am Lamps."

The traveller looked a little confused.

"Who did you say you are?"

"Lamps, sir," showing an oily cloth in his hand, as farther explanation.

"Surely, surely. Is there any hotel or tavern here?"

"Not exactly here, sir. There is a Refreshment Room here, but--" Lamps,

with a mighty serious look, gave his head a warning roll that plainly

added--"but it's a blessed circumstance for you that it's not open."

"You couldn't recommend it, I see, if it was available?"

"Ask your pardon, sir. If it was--?"

"Open?"

"It ain't my place, as a paid servant of the company, to give my opinion

on any of the company's toepics,"--he pronounced it more like

toothpicks,--"beyond lamp-ile and cottons," returned Lamps in a

confidential tone; "but, speaking as a man, I wouldn't recommend my

father (if he was to come to life again) to go and try how he'd be

treated at the Refreshment Room. Not speaking as a man, no, I would

_not_."

The traveller nodded conviction. "I suppose I can put up in the town?

There is a town here?" For the traveller (though a stay-at-home compared

with most travellers) had been, like many others, carried on the steam

winds and the iron tides through that Junction before, without having

ever, as one might say, gone ashore there.

"Oh yes, there's a town, sir! Anyways, there's town enough to put up in.

But," following the glance of the other at his luggage, "this is a very

dead time of the night with us, sir. The deadest time. I might a'most

call it our deadest and buriedest time."

"No porters about?"

"Well, sir, you see," returned Lamps, confidential again, "they in

general goes off with the gas. That's how it is. And they seem to have

overlooked you, through your walking to the furder end of the platform.

But, in about twelve minutes or so, she may be up."

"Who may be up?"

"The three forty-two, sir. She goes off in a sidin' till the Up X

passes, and then she"--here an air of hopeful vagueness pervaded

Lamps--"does all as lays in her power."

"I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement."

"I doubt if anybody do, sir. She's a Parliamentary, sir. And, you see,

a Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun--"

"Do you mean an Excursion?"

"That's it, sir.--A Parliamentary or a Skirmishun, she mostly _does_ go

off into a sidin'. But, when she _can_ get a chance, she's whistled out

of it, and she's whistled up into doin' all as,"--Lamps again wore the

air of a highly sanguine man who hoped for the best,--"all as lays in her

power."

He then explained that the porters on duty, being required to be in

attendance on the Parliamentary matron in question, would doubtless turn

up with the gas. In the meantime, if the gentleman would not very much

object to the smell of lamp-oil, and would accept the warmth of his

little room--The gentleman, being by this time very cold, instantly

closed with the proposal.

A greasy little cabin it was, suggestive, to the sense of smell, of a

cabin in a Whaler. But there was a bright fire burning in its rusty

grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden stand of newly trimmed and

lighted lamps, ready for carriage service. They made a bright show, and

their light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity of the room, as

borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on a form by

the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of stooping velveteen

shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various untidy shelves accommodated a

quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a fragrant collection of what

looked like the pocket-handkerchiefs of the whole lamp family.

As Barbox Brothers (so to call the traveller on the warranty of his

luggage) took his seat upon the form, and warmed his now ungloved hands

at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal desk, much blotched with

ink, which his elbow touched. Upon it were some scraps of coarse paper,

and a superannuated steel pen in very reduced and gritty circumstances.

From glancing at the scraps of paper, he turned involuntarily to his

host, and said, with some roughness:

"Why, you are never a poet, man?"

Lamps had certainly not the conventional appearance of one, as he stood

modestly rubbing his squab nose with a handkerchief so exceedingly oily,

that he might have been in the act of mistaking himself for one of his

charges. He was a spare man of about the Barbox Brothers time of life,

with his features whimsically drawn upward as if they were attracted by

the roots of his hair. He had a peculiarly shining transparent

complexion, probably occasioned by constant oleaginous application; and

his attractive hair, being cut short, and being grizzled, and standing

straight up on end as if it in its turn were attracted by some invisible

magnet above it, the top of his head was not very unlike a lamp-wick.

"But, to be sure, it's no business of mine," said Barbox Brothers. "That

was an impertinent observation on my part. Be what you like."

"Some people, sir," remarked Lamps in a tone of apology, "are sometimes

what they don't like."

"Nobody knows that better than I do," sighed the other. "I have been

what I don't like, all my life."

"When I first took, sir," resumed Lamps, "to composing little

Comic-Songs--like--"

Barbox Brothers eyed him with great disfavour.

"--To composing little Comic-Songs-like--and what was more hard--to

singing 'em afterwards," said Lamps, "it went against the grain at that

time, it did indeed."

Something that was not all oil here shining in Lamps's eye, Barbox

Brothers withdrew his own a little disconcerted, looked at the fire, and

put a foot on the top bar. "Why did you do it, then?" he asked after a

short pause; abruptly enough, but in a softer tone. "If you didn't want

to do it, why did you do it? Where did you sing them? Public-house?"

To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious reply: "Bedside."

At this moment, while the traveller looked at him for elucidation, Mugby

Junction started suddenly, trembled violently, and opened its gas eyes.

"She's got up!" Lamps announced, excited. "What lays in her power is

sometimes more, and sometimes less; but it's laid in her power to get up

to-night, by George!"

The legend "Barbox Brothers," in large white letters on two black

surfaces, was very soon afterwards trundling on a truck through a silent

street, and, when the owner of the legend had shivered on the pavement

half an hour, what time the porter's knocks at the Inn Door knocked up

the whole town first, and the Inn last, he groped his way into the close

air of a shut-up house, and so groped between the sheets of a shut-up bed

that seemed to have been expressly refrigerated for him when last made.

II.

"You remember me, Young Jackson?"

"What do I remember if not you? You are my first remembrance. It was

you who told me that was my name. It was you who told me that on every

twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called

a birthday. I suppose the last communication was truer than the first!"

"What am I like, Young Jackson?"

"You are like a blight all through the year to me. You hard-lined, thin-

lipped, repressive, changeless woman with a wax mask on. You are like

the Devil to me; most of all when you teach me religious things, for you

make me abhor them."

"You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?" In another voice from another

quarter.

"Most gratefully, sir. You were the ray of hope and prospering ambition

in my life. When I attended your course, I believed that I should come

to be a great healer, and I felt almost happy--even though I was still

the one boarder in the house with that horrible mask, and ate and drank

in silence and constraint with the mask before me, every day. As I had

done every, every, every day, through my school-time and from my earliest

recollection."

"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"

"You are like a Superior Being to me. You are like Nature beginning to

reveal herself to me. I hear you again, as one of the hushed crowd of

young men kindling under the power of your presence and knowledge, and

you bring into my eyes the only exultant tears that ever stood in them."

"You remember Me, Mr. Young Jackson?" In a grating voice from quite

another quarter.

"Too well. You made your ghostly appearance in my life one day, and

announced that its course was to be suddenly and wholly changed. You

showed me which was my wearisome seat in the Galley of Barbox Brothers.

(When _they_ were, if they ever were, is unknown to me; there was nothing

of them but the name when I bent to the oar.) You told me what I was to

do, and what to be paid; you told me afterwards, at intervals of years,

when I was to sign for the Firm, when I became a partner, when I became

the Firm. I know no more of it, or of myself."

"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"

"You are like my father, I sometimes think. You are hard enough and cold

enough so to have brought up an acknowledged son. I see your scanty

figure, your close brown suit, and your tight brown wig; but you, too,

wear a wax mask to your death. You never by a chance remove it--it never

by a chance falls off--and I know no more of you."

Throughout this dialogue, the traveller spoke to himself at his window in

the morning, as he had spoken to himself at the Junction overnight. And

as he had then looked in the darkness, a man who had turned grey too

soon, like a neglected fire: so he now looked in the sun-light, an ashier

grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun put out.

The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some offshoot or irregular branch of

the Public Notary and bill-broking tree. It had gained for itself a

griping reputation before the days of Young Jackson, and the reputation

had stuck to it and to him. As he had imperceptibly come into possession

of the dim den up in the corner of a court off Lombard Street, on whose

grimy windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had for many long years

daily interposed itself between him and the sky, so he had insensibly

found himself a personage held in chronic distrust, whom it was essential

to screw tight to every transaction in which he engaged, whose word was

never to be taken without his attested bond, whom all dealers with openly

set up guards and wards against. This character had come upon him

through no act of his own. It was as if the original Barbox had

stretched himself down upon the office floor, and had thither caused to

be conveyed Young Jackson in his sleep, and had there effected a

metempsychosis and exchange of persons with him. The discovery--aided in

its turn by the deceit of the only woman he had ever loved, and the

deceit of the only friend he had ever made: who eloped from him to be

married together--the discovery, so followed up, completed what his

earliest rearing had begun. He shrank, abashed, within the form of

Barbox, and lifted up his head and heart no more.

But he did at last effect one great release in his condition. He broke

the oar he had plied so long, and he scuttled and sank the galley. He

prevented the gradual retirement of an old conventional business from

him, by taking the initiative and retiring from it. With enough to live

on (though, after all, with not too much), he obliterated the firm of

Barbox Brothers from the pages of the Post-Office Directory and the face

of the earth, leaving nothing of it but its name on two portmanteaus.

"For one must have some name in going about, for people to pick up," he

explained to Mugby High Street, through the Inn window, "and that name at

least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson!--Not to mention its being a

sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson."

He took up his hat and walked out, just in time to see, passing along on

the opposite side of the way, a velveteen man, carrying his day's dinner

in a small bundle that might have been larger without suspicion of

gluttony, and pelting away towards the Junction at a great pace.

"There's Lamps!" said Barbox Brothers. "And by the bye--"

Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so self-contained, and not yet

three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing

his chin in the street, in a brown study about Comic Songs.

"Bedside?" said Barbox Brothers testily. "Sings them at the bedside? Why

at the bedside, unless he goes to bed drunk? Does, I shouldn't wonder.

But it's no business of mine. Let me see. Mugby Junction, Mugby

Junction. Where shall I go next? As it came into my head last night

when I woke from an uneasy sleep in the carriage and found myself here, I

can go anywhere from here. Where shall I go? I'll go and look at the

Junction by daylight. There's no hurry, and I may like the look of one

Line better than another."

But there were so many Lines. Gazing down upon them from a bridge at the

Junction, it was as if the concentrating Companies formed a great

Industrial Exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that

spun iron. And then so many of the Lines went such wonderful ways, so

crossing and curving among one another, that the eye lost them. And then

some of them appeared to start with the fixed intention of going five

hundred miles, and all of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant

barrier, or turned off into a workshop. And then others, like

intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued

round and came back again. And then others were so chock-full of trucks

of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so

gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set apart for wheeled

objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others were so bright and

clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle

wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in the air (looking much like

their masters on strike), that there was no beginning, middle, or end to

the bewilderment.

Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right hand

across the lines on his forehead, which multiplied while he looked down,

as if the railway Lines were getting themselves photographed on that

sensitive plate. Then was heard a distant ringing of bells and blowing

of whistles. Then, puppet-looking heads of men popped out of boxes in

perspective, and popped in again. Then, prodigious wooden razors, set up

on end, began shaving the atmosphere. Then, several locomotive engines

in several directions began to scream and be agitated. Then, along one

avenue a train came in. Then, along another two trains appeared that

didn't come in, but stopped without. Then, bits of trains broke off.

Then, a struggling horse became involved with them. Then, the

locomotives shared the bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.

"I have not made my next move much clearer by this. No hurry. No need

to make up my mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet the day after. I'll

take a walk."

It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it should) that the walk tended to

the platform at which he had alighted, and to Lamps's room. But Lamps

was not in his room. A pair of velveteen shoulders were adapting

themselves to one of the impressions on the wall by Lamps's fireplace,

but otherwise the room was void. In passing back to get out of the

station again, he learnt the cause of this vacancy, by catching sight of

Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping along the top of a train,

from carriage to carriage, and catching lighted namesakes thrown up to

him by a coadjutor.

"He is busy. He has not much time for composing or singing Comic Songs

this morning, I take it."

The direction he pursued now was into the country, keeping very near to

the side of one great Line of railway, and within easy view of others. "I

have half a mind,"' he said, glancing around, "to settle the question

from this point, by saying, 'I'll take this set of rails, or that, or

t'other, and stick to it.' They separate themselves from the confusion,

out here, and go their ways."

Ascending a gentle hill of some extent, he came to a few cottages. There,

looking about him as a very reserved man might who had never looked about

him in his life before, he saw some six or eight young children come

merrily trooping and whooping from one of the cottages, and disperse. But

not until they had all turned at the little garden-gate, and kissed their

hands to a face at the upper window: a low window enough, although the

upper, for the cottage had but a story of one room above the ground.

Now, that the children should do this was nothing; but that they should

do this to a face lying on the sill of the open window, turned towards

them in a horizontal position, and apparently only a face, was something

noticeable. He looked up at the window again. Could only see a very

fragile, though a very bright face, lying on one cheek on the

window-sill. The delicate smiling face of a girl or woman. Framed in

long bright brown hair, round which was tied a light blue band or fillet,

passing under the chin.

He walked on, turned back, passed the window again, shyly glanced up

again. No change. He struck off by a winding branch-road at the top of

the hill--which he must otherwise have descended--kept the cottages in

view, worked his way round at a distance so as to come out once more into

the main road, and be obliged to pass the cottages again. The face still

lay on the window-sill, but not so much inclined towards him. And now

there were a pair of delicate hands too. They had the action of

performing on some musical instrument, and yet it produced no sound that

reached his ears.

"Mugby Junction must be the maddest place in England," said Barbox

Brothers, pursuing his way down the hill. "The first thing I find here

is a Railway Porter who composes comic songs to sing at his bedside. The

second thing I find here is a face, and a pair of hands playing a musical

instrument that _don't_ play!"

The day was a fine bright day in the early beginning of November, the air

was clear and inspiriting, and the landscape was rich in beautiful

colours. The prevailing colours in the court off Lombard Street, London

city, had been few and sombre. Sometimes, when the weather elsewhere was

very bright indeed, the dwellers in those tents enjoyed a pepper-and-salt-

coloured day or two, but their atmosphere's usual wear was slate or snuff

coloured.

He relished his walk so well that he repeated it next day. He was a

little earlier at the cottage than on the day before, and he could hear

the children upstairs singing to a regular measure, and clapping out the

time with their hands.

"Still, there is no sound of any musical instrument," he said, listening

at the corner, "and yet I saw the performing hands again as I came by.

What are the children singing? Why, good Lord, they can never be singing

the multiplication table?"

They were, though, and with infinite enjoyment. The mysterious face had

a voice attached to it, which occasionally led or set the children right.

Its musical cheerfulness was delightful. The measure at length stopped,

and was succeeded by a murmuring of young voices, and then by a short

song which he made out to be about the current month of the year, and

about what work it yielded to the labourers in the fields and farmyards.

Then there was a stir of little feet, and the children came trooping and

whooping out, as on the previous day. And again, as on the previous day,

they all turned at the garden-gate, and kissed their hands--evidently to

the face on the window-sill, though Barbox Brothers from his retired post

of disadvantage at the corner could not see it.

But, as the children dispersed, he cut off one small straggler--a brown-

faced boy with flaxen hair--and said to him:

"Come here, little one. Tell me, whose house is that?"

The child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, half in shyness,

and half ready for defence, said from behind the inside of his elbow:

"Phoebe's."

"And who," said Barbox Brothers, quite as much embarrassed by his part in

the dialogue as the child could possibly be by his, "is Phoebe?"

To which the child made answer: "Why, Phoebe, of course."

The small but sharp observer had eyed his questioner closely, and had

taken his moral measure. He lowered his guard, and rather assumed a tone

with him: as having discovered him to be an unaccustomed person in the

art of polite conversation.

"Phoebe," said the child, "can't be anybobby else but Phoebe. Can she?"

"No, I suppose not."

"Well," returned the child, "then why did you ask me?"

Deeming it prudent to shift his ground, Barbox Brothers took up a new

position.

"What do you do there? Up there in that room where the open window is.

What do you do there?"

"Cool," said the child.

"Eh?"

"Co-o-ol," the child repeated in a louder voice, lengthening out the word

with a fixed look and great emphasis, as much as to say: "What's the use

of your having grown up, if you're such a donkey as not to understand

me?"

"Ah! School, school," said Barbox Brothers. "Yes, yes, yes. And Phoebe

teaches you?"

The child nodded.

"Good boy."

"Tound it out, have you?" said the child.

"Yes, I have found it out. What would you do with twopence, if I gave it

you?"

"Pend it."

The knock-down promptitude of this reply leaving him not a leg to stand

upon, Barbox Brothers produced the twopence with great lameness, and

withdrew in a state of humiliation.

But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he passed the cottage, he

acknowledged its presence there with a gesture, which was not a nod, not

a bow, not a removal of his hat from his head, but was a diffident

compromise between or struggle with all three. The eyes in the face

seemed amused, or cheered, or both, and the lips modestly said: "Good-day

to you, sir."

"I find I must stick for a time to Mugby Junction," said Barbox Brothers

with much gravity, after once more stopping on his return road to look at

the Lines where they went their several ways so quietly. "I can't make

up my mind yet which iron road to take. In fact, I must get a little

accustomed to the Junction before I can decide."

So, he announced at the Inn that he was "going to stay on for the

present," and improved his acquaintance with the Junction that night, and

again next morning, and again next night and morning: going down to the

station, mingling with the people there, looking about him down all the

avenues of railway, and beginning to take an interest in the incomings

and outgoings of the trains. At first, he often put his head into

Lamps's little room, but he never found Lamps there. A pair or two of

velveteen shoulders he usually found there, stooping over the fire,

sometimes in connection with a clasped knife and a piece of bread and

meat; but the answer to his inquiry, "Where's Lamps?" was, either that he

was "t'other side the line," or, that it was his off-time, or (in the

latter case) his own personal introduction to another Lamps who was not

his Lamps. However, he was not so desperately set upon seeing Lamps now,

but he bore the disappointment. Nor did he so wholly devote himself to

his severe application to the study of Mugby Junction as to neglect

exercise. On the contrary, he took a walk every day, and always the same

walk. But the weather turned cold and wet again, and the window was

never open.

III.

At length, after a lapse of some days, there came another streak of fine

bright hardy autumn weather. It was a Saturday. The window was open,

and the children were gone. Not surprising, this, for he had patiently

watched and waited at the corner until they _were_ gone.

"Good-day," he said to the face; absolutely getting his hat clear off his

head this time.

"Good-day to you, sir."

"I am glad you have a fine sky again to look at."

"Thank you, sir. It is kind if you."

"You are an invalid, I fear?"

"No, sir. I have very good health."

"But are you not always lying down?"

"Oh yes, I am always lying down, because I cannot sit up! But I am not

an invalid."

The laughing eyes seemed highly to enjoy his great mistake.

"Would you mind taking the trouble to come in, sir? There is a beautiful

view from this window. And you would see that I am not at all ill--being

so good as to care."

It was said to help him, as he stood irresolute, but evidently desiring

to enter, with his diffident hand on the latch of the garden-gate. It

did help him, and he went in.

The room upstairs was a very clean white room with a low roof. Its only

inmate lay on a couch that brought her face to a level with the window.

The couch was white too; and her simple dress or wrapper being light

blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a

fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she

instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it

was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily,

and got it over.

There was an awkward constraint upon him, nevertheless, as he touched her

hand, and took a chair at the side of her couch.

"I see now," he began, not at all fluently, "how you occupy your hand.

Only seeing you from the path outside, I thought you were playing upon

something."

She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making lace. A

lace-pillow lay upon her breast; and the quick movements and changes of

her hands upon it, as she worked, had given them the action he had

misinterpreted.

"That is curious," she answered with a bright smile. "For I often fancy,

myself, that I play tunes while I am at work."

"Have you any musical knowledge?"

She shook her head.

"I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any instrument, which could be

made as handy to me as my lace-pillow. But I dare say I deceive myself.

At all events, I shall never know."

"You have a musical voice. Excuse me; I have heard you sing."

"With the children?" she answered, slightly colouring. "Oh yes. I sing

with the dear children, if it can be called singing."

Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small forms in the room, and hazarded

the speculation that she was fond of children, and that she was learned

in new systems of teaching them?

"Very fond of them," she said, shaking her head again; "but I know

nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure

it gives me when they learn. Perhaps your overhearing my little scholars

sing some of their lessons has led you so far astray as to think me a

grand teacher? Ah! I thought so! No, I have only read and been told

about that system. It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to treat them

so like the merry Robins they are, that I took up with it in my little

way. You don't need to be told what a very little way mine is, sir," she

added with a glance at the small forms and round the room.

All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow. As they still

continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute for conversation in

the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the opportunity of

observing her. He guessed her to be thirty. The charm of her

transparent face and large bright brown eyes was, not that they were

passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful.

Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have

besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere

compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, and an

impertinence.

He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he directed his

towards the prospect, saying: "Beautiful, indeed!"

"Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had a fancy that I would like to

sit up, for once, only to try how it looks to an erect head. But what a

foolish fancy that would be to encourage! It cannot look more lovely to

any one than it does to me."

Her eyes were turned to it, as she spoke, with most delighted admiration

and enjoyment. There was not a trace in it of any sense of deprivation.

"And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and steam

changing places so fast, make it so lively for me," she went on. "I

think of the number of people who can go where they wish, on their

business, or their pleasure; I remember that the puffs make signs to me

that they are actually going while I look; and that enlivens the prospect

with abundance of company, if I want company. There is the great

Junction, too. I don't see it under the foot of the hill, but I can very

often hear it, and I always know it is there. It seems to join me, in a

way, to I don't know how many places and things that I shall never see."

With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined himself to

something he had never seen, he said constrainedly: "Just so."

"And so you see, sir," pursued Phoebe, "I am not the invalid you thought

me, and I am very well off indeed."

"You have a happy disposition," said Barbox Brothers: perhaps with a

slight excusatory touch for his own disposition.

"Ah! But you should know my father," she replied. "His is the happy

disposition!--Don't mind, sir!" For his reserve took the alarm at a step

upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he would be set down for a

troublesome intruder. "This is my father coming."

The door opened, and the father paused there.

"Why, Lamps!" exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his chair. "How

do you do, Lamps?"

To which Lamps responded: "The gentleman for Nowhere! How do you DO,

sir?"

And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of Lamp's

daughter.

"I have looked you up half-a-dozen times since that night," said Barbox

Brothers, "but have never found you."

"So I've heerd on, sir, so I've heerd on," returned Lamps. "It's your

being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train,

that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for Nowhere.

No offence in my having called you by it when took by surprise, I hope,

sir?"

"None at all. It's as good a name for me as any other you could call me

by. But may I ask you a question in the corner here?"

Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his daughter's couch by one

of the buttons of his velveteen jacket.

"Is this the bedside where you sing your songs?"

Lamps nodded.

The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder, and they faced

about again.

"Upon my word, my dear," said Lamps then to his daughter, looking from

her to her visitor, "it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought

acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if this gentleman will

excuse me) take a rounder."

Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out his oily

handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an

elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the

forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear. After this

operation he shone exceedingly.

"It's according to my custom when particular warmed up by any agitation,

sir," he offered by way of apology. "And really, I am throwed into that

state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phoebe, that I--that

I think I will, if you'll excuse me, take another rounder." Which he

did, seeming to be greatly restored by it.

They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she was working

at her lace-pillow. "Your daughter tells me," said Barbox Brothers,

still in a half-reluctant shamefaced way, "that she never sits up."

"No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her mother (who died when she was

a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as she had

never mentioned to me that she _was_ subject to fits, they couldn't be

guarded against. Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and this

happened."

"It was very wrong of her," said Barbox Brothers with a knitted brow, "to

marry you, making a secret of her infirmity.'

"Well, sir!" pleaded Lamps in behalf of the long-deceased. "You see,

Phoebe and me, we have talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such a

number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, and what with misfits,

of one sort and another, that if we confessed to 'em all before we got

married, most of us might never get married."

"Might not that be for the better?"

"Not in this case, sir," said Phoebe, giving her hand to her father.

"No, not in this case, sir," said her father, patting it between his own.

"You correct me," returned Barbox Brothers with a blush; "and I must look

so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to

confess to _that_ infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more

about yourselves. I hardly knew how to ask it of you, for I am conscious

that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I

wish you would."

"With all our hearts, sir," returned Lamps gaily for both. "And first of

all, that you may know my name--"

"Stay!" interposed the visitor with a slight flush. "What signifies your

name? Lamps is name enough for me. I like it. It is bright and

expressive. What do I want more?"

"Why, to be sure, sir," returned Lamps. "I have in general no other name

down at the Junction; but I thought, on account of your being here as a

first-class single, in a private character, that you might--"

The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps acknowledged

the mark of confidence by taking another rounder.

"You are hard-worked, I take for granted?" said Barbox Brothers, when the

subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than be went into it.

Lamps was beginning, "Not particular so"--when his daughter took him up.

"Oh yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen hours

a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time."

"And you," said Barbox Brothers, "what with your school, Phoebe, and what

with your lace-making--"

"But my school is a pleasure to me," she interrupted, opening her brown

eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse. "I began it when I

was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company,

don't you see? _That_ was not work. I carry it on still, because it

keeps children about me. _That_ is not work. I do it as love, not as

work. Then my lace-pillow;" her busy hands had stopped, as if her

argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at

the name; "it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my

tunes when I hum any, and _that's_ not work. Why, you yourself thought

it was music, you know, sir. And so it is to me."

"Everything is!" cried Lamps radiantly. "Everything is music to her,

sir."

"My father is, at any rate," said Phoebe, exultingly pointing her thin

forefinger at him. "There is more music in my father than there is in a

brass band."

"I say! My dear! It's very fillyillially done, you know; but you are

flattering your father," he protested, sparkling.

"No, I am not, sir, I assure you. No, I am not. If you could hear my

father sing, you would know I am not. But you never will hear him sing,

because he never sings to any one but me. However tired he is, he always

sings to me when he comes home. When I lay here long ago, quite a poor

little broken doll, he used to sing to me. More than that, he used to

make songs, bringing in whatever little jokes we had between us. More

than that, he often does so to this day. Oh! I'll tell of you, father,

as the gentleman has asked about you. He is a poet, sir."

"I shouldn't wish the gentleman, my dear," observed Lamps, for the moment

turning grave, "to carry away that opinion of your father, because it

might look as if I was given to asking the stars in a molloncolly manner

what they was up to. Which I wouldn't at once waste the time, and take

the liberty, my dear."

"My father," resumed Phoebe, amending her text, "is always on the bright

side, and the good side. You told me, just now, I had a happy

disposition. How can I help it?"

"Well; but, my dear," returned Lamps argumentatively, "how can I help it?

Put it to yourself sir. Look at her. Always as you see her now. Always

working--and after all, sir, for but a very few shillings a week--always

contented, always lively, always interested in others, of all sorts. I

said, this moment, she was always as you see her now. So she is, with a

difference that comes to much the same. For, when it is my Sunday off

and the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the prayers and thanks

read in the touchingest way, and I have the hymns sung to me--so soft,

sir, that you couldn't hear 'em out of this room--in notes that seem to

me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to it."

It might have been merely through the association of these words with

their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger

association of the words with the Redeemer's presence beside the

bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the

lace-pillow, and clasped themselves around his neck as he bent down.

There was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the

visitor could easily see; but each made it, for the other's sake,

retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or

acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. In a very few

moments Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features

beaming, while Phoebe's laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon

their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and

to Barbox Brothers.

"When my father, sir," she said brightly, "tells you about my being

interested in other people, even though they know nothing about me--which,

by the bye, I told you myself--you ought to know how that comes about.

That's my father's doing."

"No, it isn't!" he protested.

"Don't you believe him, sir; yes, it is. He tells me of everything he

sees down at his work. You would be surprised what a quantity he gets

together for me every day. He looks into the carriages, and tells me how

the ladies are dressed--so that I know all the fashions! He looks into

the carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he sees, and what new-

married couples on their wedding trip--so that I know all about that! He

collects chance newspapers and books--so that I have plenty to read! He

tells me about the sick people who are travelling to try to get better--so

that I know all about them! In short, as I began by saying, he tells me

everything he sees and makes out down at his work, and you can't think

what a quantity he does see and make out."

"As to collecting newspapers and books, my dear," said Lamps, "it's clear

I can have no merit in that, because they're not my perquisites. You

see, sir, it's this way: A Guard, he'll say to me, 'Hallo, here you are,

Lamps. I've saved this paper for your daughter. How is she a-going on?'

A Head-Porter, he'll say to me, 'Here! Catch hold, Lamps. Here's a

couple of wollumes for your daughter. Is she pretty much where she

were?' And that's what makes it double welcome, you see. If she had a

thousand pound in a box, they wouldn't trouble themselves about her; but

being what she is--that is, you understand," Lamps added, somewhat

hurriedly, "not having a thousand pound in a box--they take thought for

her. And as concerning the young pairs, married and unmarried, it's only

natural I should bring home what little I can about _them_, seeing that

there's not a Couple of either sort in the neighbourhood that don't come

of their own accord to confide in Phoebe."

She raised her eyes triumphantly to Barbox Brothers as she said:

"Indeed, sir, that is true. If I could have got up and gone to church, I

don't know how often I should have been a bridesmaid. But, if I could

have done that, some girls in love might have been jealous of me, and, as

it is, no girl is jealous of me. And my pillow would not have been half

as ready to put the piece of cake under, as I always find it," she added,

turning her face on it with a light sigh, and a smile at her father.

The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now led to an

understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she was the domestic

of the cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, attended by a

pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom three times her

height. He therefore rose to take his leave, and took it; saying that,

if Phoebe had no objection, he would come again.

He had muttered that he would come "in the course of his walks." The

course of his walks must have been highly favourable to his return, for

he returned after an interval of a single day.

"You thought you would never see me any more, I suppose?" he said to

Phoebe as he touched her hand, and sat down by her couch.

"Why should I think so?" was her surprised rejoinder.

"I took it for granted you would mistrust me."

"For granted, sir? Have you been so much mistrusted?"

"I think I am justified in answering yes. But I may have mistrusted,

too, on my part. No matter just now. We were speaking of the Junction

last time. I have passed hours there since the day before yesterday."

"Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere?" she asked with a smile.

"Certainly for Somewhere; but I don't yet know Where. You would never

guess what I am travelling from. Shall I tell you? I am travelling from

my birthday."

Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with incredulous

astonishment.

"Yes," said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his chair, "from my

birthday. I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier

chapters all torn out, and thrown away. My childhood had no grace of

childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from

such a lost beginning?" His eyes meeting hers as they were addressed

intently to him, something seemed to stir within his breast, whispering:

"Was this bed a place for the graces of childhood and the charms of youth

to take to kindly? Oh, shame, shame!"

"It is a disease with me," said Barbox Brothers, checking himself, and

making as though he had a difficulty in swallowing something, "to go

wrong about that. I don't know how I came to speak of that. I hope it

is because of an old misplaced confidence in one of your sex involving an

old bitter treachery. I don't know. I am all wrong together."

Her hands quietly and slowly resumed their work. Glancing at her, he saw

that her eyes were thoughtfully following them.

"I am travelling from my birthday," he resumed, "because it has always

been a dreary day to me. My first free birthday coming round some five

or six weeks hence, I am travelling to put its predecessors far behind

me, and to try to crush the day--or, at all events, put it out of my

sight--by heaping new objects on it."

As he paused, she looked at him; but only shook her head as being quite

at a loss.

"This is unintelligible to your happy disposition," he pursued, abiding

by his former phrase as if there were some lingering virtue of

self-defence in it. "I knew it would be, and am glad it is. However, on

this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of my days, having

abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, as you have heard from

your father, at the Junction here. The extent of its ramifications quite

confused me as to whither I should go, _from_ here. I have not yet

settled, being still perplexed among so many roads. What do you think I

mean to do? How many of the branching roads can you see from your

window?"

Looking out, full of interest, she answered, "Seven."

"Seven," said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a grave smile. "Well! I

propose to myself at once to reduce the gross number to those very seven,

and gradually to fine them down to one--the most promising for me--and to

take that."

"But how will you know, sir, which _is_ the most promising?" she asked,

with her brightened eyes roving over the view.

"Ah!" said Barbox Brothers with another grave smile, and considerably

improving in his ease of speech. "To be sure. In this way. Where your

father can pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and

again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose. The gentleman for

Nowhere must become still better known at the Junction. He shall

continue to explore it, until he attaches something that he has seen,

heard, or found out, at the head of each of the seven roads, to the road

itself. And so his choice of a road shall be determined by his choice

among his discoveries."

Her hands still busy, she again glanced at the prospect, as if it

comprehended something that had not been in it before, and laughed as if

it yielded her new pleasure.

"But I must not forget," said Barbox Brothers, "(having got so far) to

ask a favour. I want your help in this expedient of mine. I want to

bring you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that you lie

here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about it. May I? They

say two heads are better than one. I should say myself that probably

depends upon the heads concerned. But I am quite sure, though we are so

newly acquainted, that your head and your father's have found out better

things, Phoebe, than ever mine of itself discovered."

She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture with his

proposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him.

"That's well!" said Barbox Brothers. "Again I must not forget (having

got so far) to ask a favour. Will you shut your eyes?"

Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so.

"Keep them shut," said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and

coming back. "You are on your honour, mind, not to open you eyes until I

tell you that you may?"

"Yes! On my honour."

"Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?"

Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put

it aside.

"Tell me. Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam made by the morning

fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here?"

"Behind the elm-trees and the spire?"

"That's the road," said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes towards it.

"Yes. I watched them melt away."

"Anything unusual in what they expressed?"

"No!" she answered merrily.

"Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train. I went--don't open

your eyes--to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town. It is not

half so large as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its

place. These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you

supply the air required with your left hand. May you pick out delightful

music from it, my dear! For the present--you can open your eyes now--good-

bye!"

In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only saw, in

doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom and

caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened it; for

so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, having

taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child's

voice.

CHAPTER II--BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.

With good-will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere began, on

the very next day, his researches at the heads of the seven roads. The

results of his researches, as he and Phoebe afterwards set them down in

fair writing, hold their due places in this veracious chronicle. But

they occupied a much longer time in the getting together than they ever

will in the perusal. And this is probably the case with most reading

matter, except when it is of that highly beneficial kind (for Posterity)

which is "thrown off in a few moments of leisure" by the superior poetic

geniuses who scorn to take prose pains.

It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried himself.

His heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in it. There was

the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes sitting by,

listening to Phoebe as she picked out more and more discourse from her

musical instrument, and as her natural taste and ear refined daily upon

her first discoveries. Besides being a pleasure, this was an occupation,

and in the course of weeks it consumed hours. It resulted that his

dreaded birthday was close upon him before he had troubled himself any

more about it.

The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance that the

councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly, on a few

rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected were, after

all, in nowise assisted by his investigations. For, he had connected

this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, but could

deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference.

Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the business

stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning.

"But, sir," remarked Phoebe, "we have only six roads after all. Is the

seventh road dumb?"

"The seventh road? Oh!" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin. "That

is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present.

That is _its_ story. Phoebe."

"Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with hesitation.

"Not in the least; it is a great high-road after all."

"I should like you to take it," returned Phoebe with a persuasive smile,

"for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me. I

should like you to take it, because that road can never be again like any

other road to me. I should like you to take it, in remembrance of your

having done me so much good: of your having made me so much happier! If

you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this great

kindness," sounding a faint chord as she spoke, "I shall feel, lying here

watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a prosperous end, and

bring you back some day."

"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done."

So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his

destination was the great ingenious town.

He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of

December when he left it. "High time," he reflected, as he seated

himself in the train, "that I started in earnest! Only one clear day

remains between me and the day I am running away from. I'll push onward

for the hill-country to-morrow. I'll go to Wales."

It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable

advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses

from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, and

rugged roads. And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he

could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource,

her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now--just at

first--that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of

steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her;

whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of

the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her

so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning

of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a

great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other

similar meditations got between him and his Welsh picture. There was

within him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from

an object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this

sense, being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in losing

Mugby Junction, he had found himself again; and he was not the more

enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time in better company.

But surely here, not far ahead, must be the great ingenious town. This

crashing and clashing that the train was undergoing, and this coupling on

to it of a multitude of new echoes, could mean nothing less than approach

to the great station. It did mean nothing less. After some stormy

flashes of town lightning, in the way of swift revelations of red brick

blocks of houses, high red brick chimney-shafts, vistas of red brick

railway arches, tongues of fire, blocks of smoke, valleys of canal, and

hills if coal, there came the thundering in at the journey's end.

Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he chose, and

having appointed his dinner hour, Barbox Brothers went out for a walk in

the busy streets. And now it began to be suspected by him that Mugby

Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as well as visible,

and had joined him to an endless number of by-ways. For, whereas he

would, but a little while ago, have walked these streets blindly

brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new external world. How the

many toiling people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful it was to

consider the various trainings of eye and hand, the nice distinctions of

sight and touch, that separated them into classes of workers, and even

into classes of workers at subdivisions of one complete whole which

combined their many intelligences and forces, though of itself but some

cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know

that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution

of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not

deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of

humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a

modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their

well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a

question; the second, in the announcements of their popular studies and

amusements on the public walls); these considerations, and a host of

such, made his walk a memorable one. "I too am but a little part of a

great whole," he began to think; "and to be serviceable to myself and

others, or to be happy, I must cast my interest into, and draw it out of,

the common stock."

Although he had arrived at his journey's end for the day by noon, he had

since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the lamp-

lighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were

sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he

was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand crept into his, and a

very little voice said:

"Oh! if you please, I am lost!"

He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.

"Yes," she said, confirming her words with a serious nod. "I am indeed.

I am lost!"

Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help, descried none,

and said, bending low.

"Where do you live, my child?"

"I don't know where I live," she returned. "I am lost."

"What is your name?"

"Polly."

"What is your other name?"

The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.

Imitating the sound as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, "Trivits."

"Oh no!" said the child, shaking her head. "Nothing like that."

"Say it again, little one."

An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a different sound.

He made the venture, "Paddens?"

"Oh no!" said the child. "Nothing like that."

"Once more. Let us try it again, dear."

A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. "It

can't be Tappitarver?" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his

hat in discomfiture.

"No! It ain't," the child quietly assented.

On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with extraordinary efforts

at distinctness, it swelled into eight syllables at least.

"Ah! I think," said Barbox Brothers with a desperate air of resignation,

"that we had better give it up."

"But I am lost," said the child, nestling her little hand more closely in

his, "and you'll take care of me, won't you?"

If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion on the one

hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the other, here the man

was. "Lost!" he repeated, looking down at the child. "I am sure _I_ am.

What is to be done?"

"Where do you live?" asked the child, looking up at him wistfully.

"Over there," he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of his

hotel.

"Hadn't we better go there?" said the child.

"Really," he replied, "I don't know but what we had."

So they set off, hand-in-hand. He, through comparison of himself against

his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if he had just

developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated in her own tiny

opinion by having got him so neatly out of his embarrassment.

"We are going to have dinner when we get there, I suppose?" said Polly.

"Well," he rejoined, "I--Yes, I suppose we are."

"Do you like your dinner?" asked the child.

"Why, on the whole," said Barbox Brothers, "yes, I think I do."

"I do mine," said Polly. "Have you any brothers and sisters?"

"No. Have you?"

"Mine are dead."

"Oh!" said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of

mind and body weighing him down, he would have not known how to pursue

the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that the child was

always ready for him.

"What," she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, "are you going

to do to amuse me after dinner?"

"Upon my soul, Polly," exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a loss, "I

have not the slightest idea!"

"Then I tell you what," said Polly. "Have you got any cards at your

house?"

"Plenty," said Barbox Brothers in a boastful vein.

"Very well. Then I'll build houses, and you shall look at me. You

mustn't blow, you know."

"Oh no," said Barbox Brothers. "No, no, no. No blowing. Blowing's not

fair."

He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic

monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his

attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful

opinion of himself by saying compassionately: "What a funny man you are!"

Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew bigger

and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave himself up for a

bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to be led in triumph by all-

conquering Jack than he to be bound in slavery to Polly.

"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "No."

"What a dunce you must be, mustn't you?" said Polly.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "Yes."

"Would you like me to teach you a story? But you must remember it, you

know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else afterwards."

He professed that it would afford him the highest mental gratification to

be taught a story, and that he would humbly endeavour to retain it in his

mind. Whereupon Polly, giving her hand a new little turn in his,

expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of

which every relishing clause began with the words: "So this," or, "And so

this." As, "So this boy;" or, "So this fairy;" or, "And so this pie was

four yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep." The interest of the

romance was derived from the intervention of this fairy to punish this

boy for having a greedy appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy

made this pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled

and swelled and swelled. There were many tributary circumstances, but

the forcible interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie,

and the bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox

Brothers, with serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on

the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of

the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by, and found

deficient.

Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say at the bar, and

said awkwardly enough; "I have found a little girl!"

The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl. Nobody

knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it forth--except one

chamber-maid, who said it was Constantinople--which it wasn't.

"I will dine with my young friend in a private room," said Barbox

Brothers to the hotel authorities, "and perhaps you will be so good as to

let the police know that the pretty baby is here. I suppose she is sure

to be inquired for soon, if she has not been already. Come along,

Polly."

Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the stairs

rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers. The dinner was a

most transcendant success, and the Barbox sheepishness, under Polly's

directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse gravy over

the plate with a liberal and equal hand, was another fine sight.

"And now," said Polly, "while we are at dinner, you be good, and tell me

that story I taught you."

With the tremors of a Civil Service examination upon him, and very

uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie appeared in

history, but also as to the measurements of that indispensable fact,

Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under encouragement did very

fairly. There was a want of breadth observable in his rendering of the

cheeks, as well as the appetite, of the boy; and there was a certain

tameness in his fairy, referable to an under-current of desire to account

for her. Still, as the first lumbering performance of a good-humoured

monster, it passed muster.

"I told you to be good," said Polly, "and you are good, ain't you?"

"I hope so," replied Barbox Brothers.

Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of sofa

cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a pat or two

on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and even with a gracious

kiss. In getting on her feet upon her chair, however, to give him this

last reward, she toppled forward among the dishes, and caused him to

exclaim, as he effected her rescue: "Gracious Angels! Whew! I thought

we were in the fire, Polly!"

"What a coward you are, ain't you?" said Polly when replaced.

"Yes, I am rather nervous," he replied. "Whew! Don't, Polly! Don't

flourish your spoon, or you'll go over sideways. Don't tilt up your legs

when you laugh, Polly, or you'll go over backwards. Whew! Polly, Polly,

Polly," said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, "we are

environed with dangers!"

Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that were yawning

for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to sit upon a low

stool. "I will, if you will," said Polly. So, as peace of mind should

go before all, he begged the waiter to wheel aside the table, bring a

pack of cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen, and close in Polly

and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug room within the room.

Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers on his footstool, with a

pint decanter on the rug, contemplating Polly as she built successfully,

and growing blue in the face with holding his breath, lest he should blow

the house down.

"How you stare, don't you?" said Polly in a houseless pause.

Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit, apologetically:

"I am afraid I was looking rather hard at you, Polly."

"Why do you stare?" asked Polly.

"I cannot," he murmured to himself, "recall why.--I don't know, Polly."

"You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, mustn't you?"

said Polly.

In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again intently, as she

bent her head over her card structure, her rich curls shading her face.

"It is impossible," he thought, "that I can ever have seen this pretty

baby before. Can I have dreamed of her? In some sorrowful dream?"

He could make nothing of it. So he went into the building trade as a

journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four stories

high; even five.

"I say! Who do you think is coming?" asked Polly, rubbing her eyes after

tea.

He guessed: "The waiter?"

"No," said Polly, "the dustman. I am getting sleepy."

A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers!

"I don't think I am going to be fetched to-night," said Polly. "What do

you think?"

He thought not, either. After another quarter of an hour, the dustman

not merely impending, but actually arriving, recourse was had to the

Constantinopolitan chamber-maid: who cheerily undertook that the child

should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, which she herself would

share.

"And I know you will be careful, won't you," said Barbox Brothers, as a

new fear dawned upon him, "that she don't fall out of bed?"

Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the necessity

of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat on his footstool

picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, with her dimpled chin

on his shoulder.

"Oh, what a coward you are, ain't you?" said Polly. "Do you fall out of

bed?"

"N--not generally, Polly."

"No more do I."

With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him going, and

then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be swallowed up in

the hand of the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid, trotted off, chattering,

without a vestige of anxiety.

He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and chairs

replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the room for half an

hour. "A most engaging little creature, but it's not that. A most

winning little voice, but it's not that. That has much to do with it,

but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to know this

child? What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch

in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at me?"

"Mr. Jackson!"

With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, and saw

his answer standing at the door.

"Oh, Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me! Speak a word of

encouragement to me, I beseech you."

"You are Polly's mother."

"Yes."

Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As you see what the

rose was in its faded leaves; as you see what the summer growth of the

woods was in their wintry branches; so Polly might be traced, one day, in

a careworn woman like this, with her hair turned grey. Before him were

the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned bright. This was the woman

he had loved. This was the woman he had lost. Such had been the

constancy of his imagination to her, so had Time spared her under its

withholding, that now, seeing how roughly the inexorable hand had struck

her, his soul was filled with pity and amazement.

He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the

chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half

averted.

"Did you see me in the street, and show me to your child?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit?"

"I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, 'We have lost our way, and I

must try to find mine by myself. Go to that gentleman, and tell him you

are lost. You shall be fetched by-and-by.' Perhaps you have not thought

how very young she is?"

"She is very self-reliant."

"Perhaps because she is so young."

He asked, after a short pause, "Why did you do this?"

"Oh, Mr. Jackson, do you ask me? In the hope that you might see

something in my innocent child to soften your heart towards me. Not only

towards me, but towards my husband."

He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of the room. He

came back again with a slower step, and resumed his former attitude,

saying:

"I thought you had emigrated to America?"

"We did. But life went ill with us there, and we came back."

"Do you live in this town?"

"Yes. I am a daily teacher of music here. My husband is a book-keeper."

"Are you--forgive my asking--poor?"

"We earn enough for our wants. That is not our distress. My husband is

very, very ill of a lingering disorder. He will never recover--"

"You check yourself. If it is for want of the encouraging word you spoke

of, take it from me. I cannot forget the old time, Beatrice."

"God bless you!" she replied with a burst of tears, and gave him her

trembling hand.

"Compose yourself. I cannot be composed if you are not, for to see you

weep distresses me beyond expression. Speak freely to me. Trust me."

She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while spoke calmly.

Her voice had the ring of Polly's.

"It is not that my husband's mind is at all impaired by his bodily

suffering, for I assure you that is not the case. But in his weakness,

and in his knowledge that he is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the

ascendancy of one idea. It preys upon him, embitters every moment of his

painful life, and will shorten it."

She stopping, he said again: "Speak freely to me. Trust me."

"We have had five children before this darling, and they all lie in their

little graves. He believes that they have withered away under a curse,

and that it will blight this child like the rest."

"Under what curse?"

"Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very heavily,

and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might suffer in my

mind as he does. This is the constant burden:--'I believe, Beatrice, I

was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so

much his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, the

higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence. I came

between him and you, and I took you from him. We were both secret, and

the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man

so compressed must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened

inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor, pretty little

flowers, and they fall.'"

"And you, Beatrice," he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and there

had been a silence afterwards, "how say you?"

"Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed that

you would never, never forgive."

"Until within these few weeks," he repeated. "Have you changed your

opinion of me within these few weeks?"

"Yes."

"For what reason?"

"I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town, when, to my

terror, you came in. As I veiled my face and stood in the dark end of

the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical instrument for a

bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were so softened, you showed such

interest in its selection, you took it away yourself with so much

tenderness of care and pleasure, that I knew you were a man with a most

gentle heart. Oh, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Jackson, if you could have felt the

refreshing rain of tears that followed for me!"

Was Phoebe playing at that moment on her distant couch? He seemed to

hear her.

"I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get no information. As

I had heard you say that you were going back by the next train (but you

did not say where), I resolved to visit the station at about that time of

day, as often as I could, between my lessons, on the chance of seeing you

again. I have been there very often, but saw you no more until to-day.

You were meditating as you walked the street, but the calm expression of

your face emboldened me to send my child to you. And when I saw you bend

your head to speak tenderly to her, I prayed to GOD to forgive me for

having ever brought a sorrow on it. I now pray to you to forgive me, and

to forgive my husband. I was very young, he was young too, and, in the

ignorant hardihood of such a time of life, we don't know what we do to

those who have undergone more discipline. You generous man! You good

man! So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime against you!"--for

he would not see her on her knees, and soothed her as a kind father might

have soothed an erring daughter--"thank you, bless you, thank you!"

When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the window curtain

and looked out awhile. Then he only said:

"Is Polly asleep?"

"Yes. As I came in, I met her going away upstairs, and put her to bed

myself."

"Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me your address on

this leaf of my pocket-book. In the evening I will bring her home to

you--and to her father."

* * *

"Hallo!" cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face in at the door next

morning when breakfast was ready: "I thought I was fetched last night?"

"So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here for the day, and

to take you home in the evening."

"Upon my word!" said Polly. "You are very cool, ain't you?"

However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added: "I suppose I

must give you a kiss, though you _are_ cool."

The kiss given and taken, they sat down to breakfast in a highly

conversational tone.

"Of course, you are going to amuse me?" said Polly.

"Oh, of course!" said Barbox Brothers.

In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it

indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little fat

knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down into her

left hand with a business-like slap. After this gathering of herself

together, Polly, by that time a mere heap of dimples, asked in a

wheedling manner:

"What are we going to do, you dear old thing?"

"Why, I was thinking," said Barbox Brothers, "--but are you fond of

horses, Polly?"

"Ponies, I am," said Polly, "especially when their tails are long. But

horses--n-no--too big, you know."

"Well," pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of grave mysterious

confidence adapted to the importance of the consultation, "I did see

yesterday, Polly, on the walls, pictures of two long-tailed ponies,

speckled all over--"

"No, no, NO!" cried Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on the

charming details. "Not speckled all over!"

"Speckled all over. Which ponies jump through hoops--"

"No, no, NO!" cried Polly as before. "They never jump through hoops!"

"Yes, they do. Oh, I assure you they do! And eat pie in pinafores--"

"Ponies eating pie in pinafores!" said Polly. "What a story-teller you

are, ain't you?"

"Upon my honour.--And fire off guns."

(Polly hardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting to fire-

arms.)

"And I was thinking," pursued the exemplary Barbox, "that if you and I

were to go to the Circus where these ponies are, it would do our

constitutions good."

"Does that mean amuse us?" inquired Polly. "What long words you do use,

don't you?"

Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied:

"That means amuse us. That is exactly what it means. There are many

other wonders besides the ponies, and we shall see them all. Ladies and

gentlemen in spangled dresses, and elephants and lions and tigers."

Polly became observant of the teapot, with a curled-up nose indicating

some uneasiness of mind.

"They never get out, of course," she remarked as a mere truism.

"The elephants and lions and tigers? Oh, dear no!"

"Oh, dear no!" said Polly. "And of course nobody's afraid of the ponies

shooting anybody."

"Not the least in the world."

"No, no, not the least in the world," said Polly.

"I was also thinking," proceeded Barbox, "that if we were to look in at

the toy-shop, to choose a doll--"

"Not dressed!" cried Polly with a clap of her hands. "No, no, NO, not

dressed!"

"Full-dressed. Together with a house, and all things necessary for

housekeeping--"

Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling into a swoon

of bliss.

"What a darling you are!" she languidly exclaimed, leaning back in her

chair. "Come and be hugged, or I must come and hug you."

This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the utmost

rigour of the law. It being essential to make the purchase of the doll

its first feature--or that lady would have lost the ponies--the toy-shop

expedition took precedence. Polly in the magic warehouse, with a doll as

large as herself under each arm, and a neat assortment of some twenty

more on view upon the counter, did indeed present a spectacle of

indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed happiness, but the light

cloud passed. The lovely specimen oftenest chosen, oftenest rejected,

and finally abided by, was of Circassian descent, possessing as much

boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with extreme feebleness of mouth,

and combining a sky-blue silk pelisse with rose-coloured satin trousers,

and a black velvet hat: which this fair stranger to our northern shores

would seem to have founded on the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent.

The name this distinguished foreigner brought with her from beneath the

glowing skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly's authority) Miss Melluka,

and the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox

coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that her silver tea-spoons

were as large as her kitchen poker, and that the proportions of her watch

exceeded those of her frying-pan. Miss Melluka was graciously pleased to

express her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was Polly; for the

ponies were speckled, and brought down nobody when they fired, and the

savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be mere smoke--which article, in

fact, they did produce in large quantities from their insides. The

Barbox absorption in the general subject throughout the realisation of

these delights was again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold

at dinner, when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite

to Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable spine), and even

induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with due decorum the

prevailing glorious idea. To wind up, there came the agreeable fever of

getting Miss Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly

with Polly, to be taken home. But, by that time, Polly had become unable

to look upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and had withdrawn

her consciousness into the wonderful Paradise of a child's sleep. "Sleep,

Polly, sleep," said Barbox Brothers, as her head dropped on his shoulder;

"you shall not fall out of this bed easily, at any rate!"

What rustling piece of paper he took from his pocket, and carefully

folded into the bosom of Polly's frock, shall not be mentioned. He said

nothing about it, and nothing shall be said about it. They drove to a

modest suburb of the great ingenious town, and stopped at the fore-court

of a small house. "Do not wake the child," said Barbox Brothers softly

to the driver; "I will carry her in as she is."

Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by Polly's mother,

Polly's bearer passed on with mother and child in to a ground-floor room.

There, stretched on a sofa, lay a sick man, sorely wasted, who covered

his eyes with his emaciated hand.

"Tresham," said Barbox in a kindly voice, "I have brought you back your

Polly, fast asleep. Give me your hand, and tell me you are better."

The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head over the

hand into which it was taken, and kissed it. "Thank you, thank you! I

may say that I am well and happy."

"That's brave," said Barbox. "Tresham, I have a fancy--Can you make room

for me beside you here?"

He sat down on the sofa as he said the words, cherishing the plump

peachey cheek that lay uppermost on his shoulder.

"I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old fellow now, you know,

and old fellows may take fancies into their heads sometimes), to give up

Polly, having found her, to no one but you. Will you take her from me?"

As the father held out his arms for the child, each of the two men looked

steadily at the other.

"She is very dear to you, Tresham?"

"Unutterably dear."

"God bless her! It is not much, Polly," he continued, turning his eyes

upon her peaceful face as he apostrophized her, "it is not much, Polly,

for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far

better than himself as a little child is; but it would be much--much upon

his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul--if he could be so wicked

as to invoke a curse. He had better have a millstone round his neck, and

be cast into the deepest sea. Live and thrive, my pretty baby!" Here he

kissed her. "Live and prosper, and become in time the mother of other

little children, like the Angels who behold The Father's face!"

He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, and went

out.

But he went not to Wales. No, he never went to Wales. He went

straightway for another stroll about the town, and he looked in upon the

people at their work, and at their play, here, there, every-there, and

where not. For he was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, and had taken

thousands of partners into the solitary firm.

He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing before his

fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink which he had stood upon

the chimney-piece, when he heard the town clocks striking, and, referring

to his watch, found the evening to have so slipped away, that they were

striking twelve. As he put up his watch again, his eyes met those of his

reflection in the chimney-glass.

"Why, it's your birthday already," he said, smiling. "You are looking

very well. I wish you many happy returns of the day."

He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself. "By Jupiter!" he

discovered, "it alters the whole case of running away from one's

birthday! It's a thing to explain to Phoebe. Besides, here is quite a

long story to tell her, that has sprung out of the road with no story.

I'll go back, instead of going on. I'll go back by my friend Lamps's Up

X presently."

He went back to Mugby Junction, and, in point of fact, he established

himself at Mugby Junction. It was the convenient place to live in, for

brightening Phoebe's life. It was the convenient place to live in, for

having her taught music by Beatrice. It was the convenient place to live

in, for occasionally borrowing Polly. It was the convenient place to

live in, for being joined at will to all sorts of agreeable places and

persons. So, he became settled there, and, his house standing in an

elevated situation, it is noteworthy of him in conclusion, as Polly

herself might (not irreverently) have put it:

"There was an Old Barbox who lived on a hill,

And if he ain't gone, he lives there still."

Here follows the substance of what was seen, heard, or otherwise picked

up, by the gentleman for Nowhere, in his careful study of the Junction.

CHAPTER III--THE BOY AT MUGBY

I am the boy at Mugby. That's about what _I_ am.

You don't know what I mean? What a pity! But I think you do. I think

you must. Look here. I am the boy at what is called The Refreshment

Room at Mugby Junction, and what's proudest boast is, that it never yet

refreshed a mortal being.

Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, in the

height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I've often counted 'em while they

brush the First-Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among

the glasses, bounded on the nor'west by the beer, stood pretty far to the

right of a metallic object that's at times the tea-urn and at times the

soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to its

contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by

a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly

exposed sideways to the glare of Our Missis's eye--you ask a Boy so

sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink;

you take particular notice that he'll try to seem not to hear you, that

he'll appear in a absent manner to survey the Line through a transparent

medium composed of your head and body, and that he won't serve you as

long as you can possibly bear it. That's me.

What a lark it is! We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby.

Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be

finished off by our Missis. For some of the young ladies, when they're

new to the business, come into it mild! Ah! Our Missis, she soon takes

that out of 'em. Why, I originally come into the business meek myself.

But Our Missis, she soon took that out of _me_.

What a delightful lark it is! I look upon us Refreshmenters as ockipying

the only proudly independent footing on the Line. There's Papers, for

instance,--my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so,--him

as belongs to Smith's bookstall. Why, he no more dares to be up to our

Refreshmenting games than he dares to jump a top of a locomotive with her

steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at

limited-mail speed. Papers, he'd get his head punched at every

compartment, first, second, and third, the whole length of a train, if he

was to ventur to imitate my demeanour. It's the same with the porters,

the same with the guards, the same with the ticket clerks, the same the

whole way up to the secretary, traffic-manager, or very chairman. There

ain't a one among 'em on the nobly independent footing we are. Did you

ever catch one of them, when you wanted anything of him, making a system

of surveying the Line through a transparent medium composed of your head

and body? I should hope not.

You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction. It's led to by

the door behind the counter, which you'll notice usually stands ajar, and

it's the room where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines their

hair. You should see 'em at it, betwixt trains, Bandolining away, as if

they was anointing themselves for the combat. When you're telegraphed,

you should see their noses all a-going up with scorn, as if it was a part

of the working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone electrical machinery. You

should hear Our Missis give the word, "Here comes the Beast to be Fed!"

and then you should see 'em indignantly skipping across the Line, from

the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale pastry

into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the glass covers,

and get out the--ha, ha, ha!--the sherry,--O my eye, my eye!--for your

Refreshment.

It's only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, of

course, I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, so

'olesome, so constitutional a check upon the public. There was a

Foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young

ladies and Our Missis for "a leetel gloss host prarndee," and having had

the Line surveyed through him by all and no other acknowledgment, was a-

proceeding at last to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own

country, when Our Missis, with her hair almost a-coming un-Bandolined

with rage, and her eyes omitting sparks, flew at him, cotched the

decanter out of his hand, and said, "Put it down! I won't allow that!"

The foreigner turned pale, stepped back with his arms stretched out in

front of him, his hands clasped, and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed:

"Ah! Is it possible, this! That these disdaineous females and this

ferocious old woman are placed here by the administration, not only to

empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives

it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another

time, a merry, wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it

out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to

sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had been rather extra

Bandolined and Line-surveyed through, when, as the bell was ringing and

he paid Our Missis, he says, very loud and good-tempered: "I tell Yew

what 'tis, ma'arm. I la'af. Theer! I la'af. I Dew. I oughter ha'

seen most things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic

Ocean, and I haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on

through Jeerusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe

Old World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian Village; but

such an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's

solid and liquid, afore the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet! And if

I hain't found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew

and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquid, all as

aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-

naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the

innermostest grit! Wheerfur--Theer!--I la'af! I Dew, ma'arm. I la'af!"

And so he went, stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all

the way to his own compartment.

I think it was her standing up agin the Foreigner as giv' Our Missis the

idea of going over to France, and droring a comparison betwixt

Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters, and Refreshmenting as

triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, of

course, I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff,

Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going; for, as

they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of

the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but

above all of business. Why then should you tire yourself to prove what

is already proved? Our Missis, however (being a teazer at all pints)

stood out grim obstinate, and got a return pass by Southeastern Tidal, to

go right through, if such should be her dispositions, to Marseilles.

Sniff is husband to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant cove. He

looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, and is sometimes, when

we are very hard put to it, let behind the counter with a corkscrew; but

never when it can be helped, his demeanour towards the public being

disgusting servile. How Mrs. Sniff ever come so far to lower herself as

to marry him, I don't know; but I suppose he does, and I should think he

wished he didn't, for he leads a awful life. Mrs. Sniff couldn't be much

harder with him if he was public. Similarly, Miss Whiff and Miss Piff,

taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder Sniff about when he _is_ let

in with a corkscrew, and they whisk things out of his hands when in his

servility he is a-going to let the public have 'em, and they snap him up

when in the crawling baseness of his spirit he is a-going to answer a

public question, and they drore more tears into his eyes than ever the

mustard does which he all day long lays on to the sawdust. (But it ain't

strong.) Once, when Sniff had the repulsiveness to reach across to get

the milk-pot to hand over for a baby, I see Our Missis in her rage catch

him by both his shoulders, and spin him out into the Bandolining Room.

But Mrs. Sniff,--how different! She's the one! She's the one as you'll

notice to be always looking another way from you, when you look at her.

She's the one with the small waist buckled in tight in front, and with

the lace cuffs at her wrists, which she puts on the edge of the counter

before her, and stands a smoothing while the public foams. This

smoothing the cuffs and looking another way while the public foams is the

last accomplishment taught to the young ladies as come to Mugby to be

finished by Our Missis; and it's always taught by Mrs. Sniff.

When Our Missis went away upon her journey, Mrs. Sniff was left in

charge. She did hold the public in check most beautiful! In all my

time, I never see half so many cups of tea given without milk to people

as wanted it with, nor half so many cups of tea with milk given to people

as wanted it without. When foaming ensued, Mrs. Sniff would say: "Then

you'd better settle it among yourselves, and change with one another." It

was a most highly delicious lark. I enjoyed the Refreshmenting business

more than ever, and was so glad I had took to it when young.

Our Missis returned. It got circulated among the young ladies, and it as

it might be penetrated to me through the crevices of the Bandolining

Room, that she had Orrors to reveal, if revelations so contemptible could

be dignified with the name. Agitation become awakened. Excitement was

up in the stirrups. Expectation stood a-tiptoe. At length it was put

forth that on our slacked evening in the week, and at our slackest time

of that evening betwixt trains, Our Missis would give her views of

foreign Refreshmenting, in the Bandolining Room.

It was arranged tasteful for the purpose. The Bandolining table and

glass was hid in a corner, a arm-chair was elevated on a packing-case for

Our Missis's ockypation, a table and a tumbler of water (no sherry in it,

thankee) was placed beside it. Two of the pupils, the season being

autumn, and hollyhocks and dahlias being in, ornamented the wall with

three devices in those flowers. On one might be read, "MAY ALBION NEVER

LEARN;" on another "KEEP THE PUBLIC DOWN;" on another, "OUR

REFRESHMENTING CHARTER." The whole had a beautiful appearance, with

which the beauty of the sentiments corresponded.

On Our Missis's brow was wrote Severity, as she ascended the fatal

platform. (Not that that was anythink new.) Miss Whiff and Miss Piff

sat at her feet. Three chairs from the Waiting Room might have been

perceived by a average eye, in front of her, on which the pupils was

accommodated. Behind them a very close observer might have discerned a

Boy. Myself.

"Where," said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, "is Sniff?"

"I thought it better," answered Mrs. Sniff, "that he should not be let to

come in. He is such an Ass."

"No doubt," assented Our Missis. "But for that reason is it not

desirable to improve his mind?"

"Oh, nothing will ever improve _him_," said Mrs. Sniff.

"However," pursued Our Missis, "call him in, Ezekiel."

I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with

disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his

corkscrew with him. He pleaded "the force of habit."

"The force!" said Mrs. Sniff. "Don't let us have you talking about

force, for Gracious' sake. There! Do stand still where you are, with

your back against the wall."

He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which

he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say no

meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door with the back of his

head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and

measure his heighth for the Army.

"I should not enter, ladies," says Our Missis, "on the revolting

disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will

cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you

wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the

constitutional motto which I see before me,"--it was behind her, but the

words sounded better so,--"'May Albion never learn!'"

Here the pupils as had made the motto admired it, and cried, "Hear! Hear!

Hear!" Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got himself

frowned down by every brow.

"The baseness of the French," pursued Our Missis, "as displayed in the

fawning nature of their Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses,

anythink as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated Bonaparte."

Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal to saying,

"We thought as much!" Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my

droring mine along with theirs, I drored another to aggravate 'em.

"Shall I be believed," says Our Missis, with flashing eyes, "when I tell

you that no sooner had I set my foot upon that treacherous shore--"

Here Sniff, either bursting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, in a low

voice: "Feet. Plural, you know."

The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to

his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so

grovelling. In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the

turned-up female noses with which it was pervaded, Our Missis went on:

"Shall I be believed when I tell you, that no sooner had I landed," this

word with a killing look at Sniff, "on that treacherous shore, than I was

ushered into a Refreshment Room where there were--I do not

exaggerate--actually eatable things to eat?"

A groan burst from the ladies. I not only did myself the honour of

jining, but also of lengthening it out.

"Where there were," Our Missis added, "not only eatable things to eat,

but also drinkable things to drink?"

A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss Piff, trembling with

indignation, called out, "Name?"

"I _will_ name," said Our Missis. "There was roast fowls, hot and cold;

there was smoking roast veal surrounded with browned potatoes; there was

hot soup with (again I ask shall I be credited?) nothing bitter in it,

and no flour to choke off the consumer; there was a variety of cold

dishes set off with jelly; there was salad; there was--mark me! _fresh_

pastry, and that of a light construction; there was a luscious show of

fruit; there was bottles and decanters of sound small wine, of every

size, and adapted to every pocket; the same odious statement will apply

to brandy; and these were set out upon the counter so that all could help

themselves."

Our Missis's lips so quivered, that Mrs. Sniff, though scarcely less

convulsed than she were, got up and held the tumbler to them.

"This," proceeds Our Missis, "was my first unconstitutional experience.

Well would it have been if it had been my last and worst. But no. As I

proceeded farther into that enslaved and ignorant land, its aspect became

more hideous. I need not explain to this assembly the ingredients and

formation of the British Refreshment sangwich?"

Universal laughter,--except from Sniff, who, as sangwich-cutter, shook

his head in a state of the utmost dejection as he stood with it agin the

wall.

"Well!" said Our Missis, with dilated nostrils. "Take a fresh, crisp,

long, crusty penny loaf made of the whitest and best flour. Cut it

longwise through the middle. Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice of

ham. Tie a smart piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole to bind

it together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of clean white paper by which

to hold it. And the universal French Refreshment sangwich busts on your

disgusted vision."

A cry of "Shame!" from all--except Sniff, which rubbed his stomach with a

soothing hand.

"I need not," said Our Missis, "explain to this assembly the usual

formation and fitting of the British Refreshment Room?"

No, no, and laughter. Sniff agin shaking his head in low spirits agin

the wall.

"Well," said Our Missis, "what would you say to a general decoration of

everythink, to hangings (sometimes elegant), to easy velvet furniture, to

abundance of little tables, to abundance of little seats, to brisk bright

waiters, to great convenience, to a pervading cleanliness and

tastefulness positively addressing the public, and making the Beast

thinking itself worth the pains?"

Contemptuous fury on the part of all the ladies. Mrs. Sniff looking as

if she wanted somebody to hold her, and everbody else looking as if

they'd rayther not.

"Three times," said Our Missis, working herself into a truly

terrimenjious state,--"three times did I see these shameful things, only

between the coast and Paris, and not counting either: at Hazebroucke, at

Arras, at Amiens. But worse remains. Tell me, what would you call a

person who should propose in England that there should be kept, say at

our own model Mugby Junction, pretty baskets, each holding an assorted

cold lunch and dessert for one, each at a certain fixed price, and each

within a passenger's power to take away, to empty in the carriage at

perfect leisure, and to return at another station fifty or a hundred

miles farther on?"

There was disagreement what such a person should be called. Whether

revolutionise, atheist, Bright (_I_ said him), or Un-English. Miss Piff

screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words: "A malignant maniac!"

"I adopt," says Our Missis, "the brand set upon such a person by the

righteous indignation of my friend Miss Piff. A malignant maniac. Know,

then, that that malignant maniac has sprung from the congenial soil of

France, and that his malignant madness was in unchecked action on this

same part of my journey."

I noticed that Sniff was a-rubbing his hands, and that Mrs. Sniff had got

her eye upon him. But I did not take more particular notice, owing to

the excited state in which the young ladies was, and to feeling myself

called upon to keep it up with a howl.

"On my experience south of Paris," said Our Missis, in a deep tone, "I

will not expatiate. Too loathsome were the task! But fancy this. Fancy

a guard coming round, with the train at full speed, to inquire how many

for dinner. Fancy his telegraphing forward the number of dinners. Fancy

every one expected, and the table elegantly laid for the complete party.

Fancy a charming dinner, in a charming room, and the head-cook, concerned

for the honour of every dish, superintending in his clean white jacket

and cap. Fancy the Beast travelling six hundred miles on end, very fast,

and with great punctuality, yet being taught to expect all this to be

done for it!"

A spirited chorus of "The Beast!"

I noticed that Sniff was agin a-rubbing his stomach with a soothing hand,

and that he had drored up one leg. But agin I didn't take particular

notice, looking on myself as called upon to stimulate public feeling. It

being a lark besides.

"Putting everything together," said Our Missis, "French Refreshmenting

comes to this, and oh, it comes to a nice total! First: eatable things

to eat, and drinkable things to drink."

A groan from the young ladies, kep' up by me.

"Second: convenience, and even elegance."

Another groan from the young ladies, kep' up by me.

"Third: moderate charges."

This time a groan from me, kep' up by the young ladies.

"Fourth:--and here," says Our Missis, "I claim your angriest

sympathy,--attention, common civility, nay, even politeness!"

Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all together.

"And I cannot in conclusion," says Our Missis, with her spitefullest

sneer, "give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after what

I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn't bear our

constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction, for a

single month, and that they would turn us to the right-about and put

another system in our places, as soon as look at us; perhaps sooner, for

I do not believe they have the good taste to care to look at us twice."

The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise. Sniff, bore away by his

servile disposition, had drored up his leg with a higher and a higher

relish, and was now discovered to be waving his corkscrew over his head.

It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep' her eye upon him like

the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. Our Missis followed them

both out, and cries was heard in the sawdust department.

You come into the Down Refreshment Room, at the Junction, making believe

you don't know me, and I'll pint you out with my right thumb over my

shoulder which is Our Missis, and which is Miss Whiff, and which is Miss

Piff, and which is Mrs. Sniff. But you won't get a chance to see Sniff,

because he disappeared that night. Whether he perished, tore to pieces,

I cannot say; but his corkscrew alone remains, to bear witness to the

servility of his disposition.