United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Mr. Judkins, the station agent at Chazy Junction, came out of his little house at daybreak, shivered a bit in the chill morning air and gave an involuntary start as he saw a private car on the sidetrack. There were two private cars, to be exact a sleeper and a baggage car and Mr. Judkins knew the three o'clock train must have left them as it passed through.
Then swiftly the doctor brought his digression to a focus. "Well, that's just a case in point," he said triumphantly. Opdyke laughed. "Really, doctor, I'm afraid I don't quite follow," he said. "Your fault, boy. You've not been paying proper attention to me; you were off on a sidetrack of your own laying.
I don't know whether someone punctured an air cushion just then, or whether it was me heavin' a sigh of relief. "Ain't you?" says I. "But Vee's strong for it, and if you don't mind " "My niece is writing letters," says Aunty, "and asked not to be disturbed until after five o'clock." "But in this case," I goes on, "maybe she'd sidetrack the letters if you'd send up word how "
Hawtrey strode along briskly until he reached the open space which divided the little wooden town from the unfenced railroad track. It was strewn with fine dusty snow, and the huge bulk of the grain elevators towered high above it against the lowering sky. A freight locomotive was just hauling a long string of wheat cars out of a sidetrack.
It was there, where the broken steps and sidetrack met, that the first men came hurrying to meet us and blocked our way four of them, active as goats, and looking fierce enough to scare away twice their number. But they recognized Ayisha, and stood aside at once to let us pass, showing her considerable gruff respect and asking a string of questions, which she countered with platitudes.
The swift run could not be made, and the train kept running without a stop, if it were not for the fact that the despatcher puts trains on the sidetrack so that the special need not be delayed, and he does it in such a manner that the regular business of the road shall not be interfered with. The interior of the despatcher's office is not, as a rule, very sumptuous.
Just as though we had been put ashore here by a crew of mutineers and deserted a pair of Robinson Crusoesses!" "Your English " "Bother my English!" "It would surely bother Mrs. Tellingham if she could hear it, poor dear." "Now, don't sidetrack me," remarked Helen. "Don't you see we are cast away on this desert isle with no means of getting back to the camp unless we swim?"
He had read a great deal of hard theology, and had at last reached that curious state which is so common in good ministers, that, namely, in which they contrive to switch off their logical faculties on the narrow sidetrack of their technical dogmas, while the great freight-train of their substantial human qualities keeps in the main highway of common-sense, in which kindly souls are always found by all who approach them by their human side.
"I have found out what that sidetrack means," he said, "and it has plunged me into another mystery so dark and profound that I cannot see my way through it. I must beg you to say no word to any one concerning the things I am about to show you." I gave the required promise, and we entered the tunnel, which nobody had visited since our former adventure.
Do you like me any better than you did in the spring?" "You silly boy, I've always liked you." "But I told you I wanted a lot. Have I made any headway?" "Headway? I should say you have. I never saw such improvement! If the university classes have done this much for you in four months, what will you be by the end of the year?" "That's right," said Quin bitterly. "Open the switch and sidetrack me!
Word Of The Day