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Updated: May 17, 2025
They lit their pipes and consulted together. The priest joined them and offered advice. Sir James became a little impatient. Half an hour passed. The engine driver, the station master, and the guard knocked the ashes out of their pipes and walked over to Sir James' compartment. The guard opened the door. "Is it Dunadea you're for, your honour?" he said. "Yes," said Sir James.
"When are you going on?" The guard turned to the engine driver. "It's what I'm after telling you," he said, "it's Dunadea the gentleman's for." "It might be better for him," said the engine driver, "if he was to content himself with Finnabeg for this day at any rate." "Do you hear that, your honour?" said the guard. "Michael here, says it would be better for you to stay in Finnabeg."
"Have sense the two of you," she said, "What's to hinder you taking the gentleman into Dunadea, Michael?" "It's what I can't do nor won't," said her husband. "I'm not asking you to," said Sir James. "I understand strikes thoroughly and I know you can't do it. All I came here for was to ask you to tell me where I could find a telegraph office."
But Sir James had never before heard of an engine driver who tried to induce a passenger to get out of his train fifteen miles short of his destination. "I insist," he said abruptly, "on your taking me on to Dunadea." "It's what I told you all along, Michael," said the guard. "He's a mighty determined gentleman, so he is. I knew that the moment I set eyes on him." The guard was perfectly right.
The track over which he travelled was badly laid and the train advanced by jerks and bumps. But the motion was pleasant to Sir James. Any forward movement of that train would have been pleasant to him. Each bump and jerk brought him a little nearer to Dunadea and therefore a little nearer to Miss Molly Dennison.
"Michael," she said, "did the young lady tell you she's to be married to-morrow?" "She did tell me," he said, "and I'm sorry for her. But what can I do? If I was to take that engine into Dunadea they'd call me a blackleg the longest day ever I lived." "I'd call you something a mighty deal worse if you don't," said his wife. "You and your strikes! Strikes, Moyah!
Sir James offered her his hand, his heart, his title, and a share of his £2,500 a year. Miss Molly accepted all four, resigned her secretaryship and went home to her father's house in Dunadea to prepare her trousseau. The train stopped abruptly. But even the bump and the ceasing of noise did not fully arouse Sir James from his pleasant dreams.
He found it impossible to keep his umbrella up, which distressed him, for he was totally unaccustomed to getting wet. He found the driver, who seemed to be a good and domesticated man, sitting at his fireside with a baby on his knee. His wife was washing clothes in a corner of the kitchen. "Excuse me," said Sir James, "but my business in Dunadea is very important.
Sir James was left wondering how the people of Dunadea managed to conduct the business of life when one day was the same to them as another and the loss of a day now and then did not matter. He was quite certain that the loss of a day mattered a great deal to him, his position being what it was.
"There's no telegraphic office nearer than Dunadea," said the engine driver, "and that's seven miles along the railway and maybe nine if you go round by road." Sir James looked out at the rain. It was thick and persistent. A strong west wind swept it in sheets across the bog.
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