"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.
© e-libr.com
feedback