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A gentleman the other day, who expressed great surprise at the smallness of the salary of our President, said, that, of course, Andrew Johnson would receive a pension when he retired from office. I could not explain to him how comical the idea was to me; but when I think of the American people pensioning Andrew Johnson, well, like the fictitious Yankee in "Mugby Junction," "I laff, I du."
Great Heaven! How arrives it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Hardly would a veritable boy, even an urchin so well "to the fore" with his epoch, as the Boy at Mugby, depict so accurately, much less take off, with a manner so entirely life-like, the astounded foreigner, any more than he would the thoroughly wide-awake and gaily derisive American.
Once or twice in a way only, "The Boy at Mugby" was introduced among the Readings, and then merely as a slight stop-gap or interlude.
Rosamond Duncombe affected to echo the heroic sentiments of the housekeeper, Mrs. Mugby. There never had been such things as ghosts, and never would be; and all the foolish stories that were told of phantoms and apparitions, had their sole foundation in the imaginations of the people who told them.
"For one must have some name in going about, for people to pick up," he explained to Mugby High Street, through the Inn window, "and that name at least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson! Not to mention its being a sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson."
"Why did you do it, then?" he asked after a short pause; abruptly enough, but in a softer tone. "If you didn't want to do it, why did you do it? Where did you sing them? Public-house?" To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious reply: "Bedside." At this moment, while the traveller looked at him for elucidation, Mugby Junction started suddenly, trembled violently, and opened its gas eyes.
A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the black hours of the four-and-twenty. Mysterious goods trains, covered with palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end.
Tell me, what would you call a person who should propose in England that there should be kept, say at our own model Mugby Junction, pretty baskets, each holding an assorted cold lunch and dessert for one, each at a certain fixed price, and each within a passenger's power to take away, to empty in the carriage at perfect leisure, and to return at another station fifty or a hundred miles farther on?"
And did Miss Rosy consent to leave her father's home without a murmur?" he asked, angrily. "Begging your pardon, sir," pleaded Mrs. Mugby, "Miss Rosamond was not the one to murmur before servants, whatever she might feel in her heart. I overheard her crying and sobbing dreadful one night, poor dear, when she little thought as there was any one to overhear her."
Visiting some poor cottagers, about a quarter of a mile from River View, she heard the whole story told her unthinkingly by a foolish old woman, who was amongst the recipients of her charity. Soon after this, the story reached the ears of the two servants an elderly woman, called Mugby, who acted as cook and housekeeper; and a smart girl, called Susan Trott. Mrs.
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