iron pots and cotton-reels and them absolutely a getting
off the line and falling over the table and injuring
the passengers almost equal to the originals it really
is quite wonderful. And when I says to the Major,
“Major can’t you by
any means give
us a communication with the guard?” the Major
says quite huffy, “No madam it’s not to
be done,” and when I says “Why not?”
the Major says, “That is between us who are
in the Railway Interest madam and our friend the Right
Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade”
and if you’ll believe me my dear the Major wrote
to Jemmy at school to consult him on the answer I
should have before I could get even that amount of
unsatisfactoriness out of the man, the reason being
that when we first began with the little model and
the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in
general as wrong as the real) and when I says laughing
“What appointment am I to hold in this undertaking
gentlemen?” Jemmy hugs me round the neck and
tells me dancing, “You shall be the Public Gran”
and consequently they put upon me just as much as
ever they like and I sit a growling in my easy-chair.
My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as
the Major cannot give half his heart and mind to anything—even
a plaything—but must get into right down
earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is
not so I do not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far
out-done by the serious and believing ways of the
Major in the management of the United Grand Junction
Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, “For”
says my Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was
christened, “we must have a whole mouthful of
name Gran or our dear old Public” and there the
young rogue kissed me, “won’t stump up.”
So the Public took the shares—ten at ninepence,
and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference
at one and sixpence—and they were all signed
by Jemmy and countersigned by the Major, and between
ourselves much better worth the money than some shares
I have paid for in my time. In the same holidays
the line was made and worked and opened and ran excursions
and had collisions and burst its boilers and all sorts
of accidents and offences all most regular correct
and pretty. The sense of responsibility entertained
by the Major as a military style of station-master
my dear starting the down train behind time and ringing
one of those little bells that you buy with the little
coal-scuttles off the tray round the man’s neck
in the street did him honour, but noticing the Major
of a night when he is writing out his monthly report
to Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock
and the Permanent Way and all the rest of it (the
whole kept upon the Major’s sideboard and dusted
with his own hands every morning before varnishing
his boots) I notice him as full of thought and care
as full can be and frowning in a fearful manner, but
indeed the Major does nothing by halves as witness
his great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy
when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and
a measuring-tape and driving I don’t know what
improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fully
believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside
down by Act of Parliament. As please Heaven
will come to pass when Jemmy takes to that as a profession!
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