Mrs Lirripers Legacy | Page 4

by ANY means give us
a communication with the guard?" the Major says quite huffy, "No
madam it's not to be done," and when I says "Why not?" the Major says,
"That is between us who are in the Railway Interest madam and our
friend the Right Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade" and
if you'll believe me my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at school to
consult him on the answer I should have before I could get even that
amount of unsatisfactoriness out of the man, the reason being that when
we first began with the little model and the working signals beautiful
and perfect (being in general as wrong as the real) and when I says
laughing "What appointment am I to hold in this undertaking
gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round the neck and tells me dancing,
"You shall be the Public Gran" and consequently they put upon me just
as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in my easy-chair.
My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the Major cannot
give half his heart and mind to anything--even a plaything--but must
get into right down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not
so I do not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far out-done by the serious
and believing ways of the Major in the management of the United
Grand Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line,
"For" says my Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened,
"we must have a whole mouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public"
and there the young rogue kissed me, "won't stump up." So the Public
took the shares--ten at ninepence, and immediately when that was spent

twelve Preference at one and sixpence--and they were all signed by
Jemmy and countersigned by the Major, and between ourselves much
better worth the money than some shares I have paid for in my time. In
the same holidays the line was made and worked and opened and ran
excursions and had collisions and burst its boilers and all sorts of
accidents and offences all most regular correct and pretty. The sense of
responsibility entertained by the Major as a military style of
station-master my dear starting the down train behind time and ringing
one of those little bells that you buy with the little coal-scuttles off the
tray round the man's neck in the street did him honour, but noticing the
Major of a night when he is writing out his monthly report to Jemmy at
school of the state of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way and all
the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major's sideboard and dusted
with his own hands every morning before varnishing his boots) I notice
him as full of thought and care as full can be and frowning in a fearful
manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by halves as witness his
great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he has Jemmy
to go with, carrying a chain and a measuring-tape and driving I don't
know what improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fully
believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside down by Act of
Parliament. As please Heaven will come to pass when Jemmy takes to
that as a profession!
Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest
brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would be hard to
say unless Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does
Joshua Lirriper know a morsel of except continually being summoned
to the County Court and having orders made upon him which he runs
away from, and once was taken in the passage of this very house with
an umbrella up and the Major's hat on, giving his name with the
door-mat round him as Sir Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing
at the Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into the house not a
minute before, through the girl letting him on the mat when he sent in a
piece of paper twisted more like one of those spills for lighting candles
than a note, offering me the choice between thirty shillings in hand and
his brains on the premises marked immediate and waiting for an answer.
My dear it gave me such a dreadful turn to think of the brains of my

poor dear Lirriper's own flesh and blood flying about the new oilcloth
however unworthy to be so assisted, that I went out of my room here to
ask him what he would take once for all not to do it for life when I
found him in the custody of two gentlemen that I should