“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.
