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Mugby Junction By Charles Dickens
PAGE: 3

"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.

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