“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 colour.
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 up-stairs 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 farm-yards. 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:
“Phœbe’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 Phœbe?”
To which the child made answer: “Why, Phœbe, 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.
“Phœbe,” said the child, “can’t be anybobby else but Phœbe. 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 Phœbe 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 connexion 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 of you.”
“You are an invalid, I fear?”
“No, sir. I have very good health.”
“But are you not always lying down?”
“O 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 up-stairs was a very clean white room with a low roof. Its only inmate lay on a couch that brought her face on a level