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There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming-red beard, half covered by a railway-rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face. "Tickets again?" said he. "No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week.
The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing, besides my travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot coat, and knitted spencer, some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage.
"Well, there was his carpet-bag and his railway-rug, just as he'd left 'em, and there was a little table near the fire all laid out snug and comfortable ready for him; but there was no more vestige of hisself than there was in the streets where I'd been lookin' for him; and so I went out again, with the prespiration streamin' down my face, and I walked that blessed town till over one o'clock this mornin, lookin' right and left, and inquirin' at every place where such a gent was likely to try and hide hisself, and playing up Mag's divarsions, which if it was divarsions to Mag, was oncommon hard work to me; and then I went back to the Victorier, and got a night's lodgin'; and the first thing this mornin' I was on my blessed legs again, and down at the quay inquirin' about vessels, and there's nothin' likely to sail afore to-night, and the vessel as is expected to sail to-night is bound for Copenhagen, and don't carry passengers; but from the looks of her captain, I should say she'd carry anythink, even to a churchyard full of corpuses, if she was paid to do it."
Well, then, must you not admit that you and I have been guilty of an extravagance of fatuous folly, and worse, in seriously proposing that a well-born, sensitive girl should not only look at, habitually and closely, but take for all her chance in life a crippled dwarf like me an anomaly, a human curiosity, a creature so unsightly that it must be carried about like any baby-in-arms, lest its repulsive ungainliness should sicken the bystanders if, leaving the shelter of a railway-rug and an armchair, it tries unhappy brute to walk?
There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming-red beard, half covered by a railway-rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face. "Tickets again?" said he. "No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week.
They sat one day, as the weather grew more settled, beside a granite bowlder, which studded the short turf at the extremity of Gorse Point, where it jutted above the sea. Joan, with her chin upon her hands, looked out upon the water; Barron, lying on a railway-rug, leaned back and smoked his pipe and studied her face with the old, keen, passionless eagerness of their earliest meetings.
'It will be time enough then to decide what is to be done, thought he. He then proceeded to relight the fire, and drawing a sofa near, he wrapped himself in a railway-rug, and lay down to sleep. For a long time he could not compose himself to slumber: he thought of Nina and her wiles ay, they were wiles; he saw them plainly enough.
When he noticed this he was a good deal annoyed, but, with an ingenuity which I can only envy, he succeeded in rigging up, with the help of a railway-rug, some safety-pins, and a stick and umbrella, a screen which, if it only held together, would completely keep the moonlight off his bed. And shortly afterwards he was comfortably in that bed.
Well, I got up behind the fly, and rides a bit, and walks a bit, keepin' the fly in sight until we comes to the Victorier; and there stoops down behind, and watches my gent hobble into the hotel, in awful pain with that lame leg of his, judgin' the faces he makes; and he walks into the coffee-room, and I makes bold to foller him; but there never was sech a young innercent as me, and I sees my party sittin' warmin' his poor lame leg, and with a carpet-bag, and railway-rug, and sechlike on the table beside him; and presently he gets up, hobblin' worse than ever, and goes outside, and I hears him makin' inquiries about the best way of gettin' on to Edinborough by train; and I sat quiet, not more than three minutes at most, becos', you see, I didn't want to look like follerin' him; and in three minutes time, out I goes, makin' as sure to find him in the bar as I make sure of your bein' close beside me at this moment; but when I went outside into the hall, and bar and sechlike, there wasn't a mortal vestige of that man to be seen; but the waiter, he tells me, as dignified and cool as yer please, that the lame gentleman has gone out by the door looking towards the water, and has only gone to have a look at the place, and get a few cigars, and will be back in ten minutes to a chop which is bein' cooked for him.
The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing besides my travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage.
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