Mugby Junction | Page 7

on the opposite side
of the way, a velveteen man, carrying his day's dinner in a small bundle that might have
been larger without suspicion of gluttony, and pelting away towards the Junction at a
great pace.
"There's Lamps!" said Barbox Brothers. "And by the bye--"
Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so self-contained, and not yet three days
emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a
brown study about Comic Songs.
"Bedside?" said Barbox Brothers testily. "Sings them at the bedside? Why at the bedside,
unless he goes to bed drunk? Does, I shouldn't wonder. But it's no business of mine. Let
me see. Mugby Junction, Mugby Junction. Where shall I go next? As it came into my
head last night when I woke from an uneasy sleep in the carriage and found myself here, I
can go anywhere from here. Where shall I go? I'll go and look at the Junction by daylight.
There's no hurry, and I may like the look of one Line better than another."
But there were so many Lines. Gazing down upon them from a bridge at the Junction, it
was as if the concentrating Companies formed a great Industrial Exhibition of the works
of extraordinary ground spiders that spun iron. And then so many of the Lines went such
wonderful ways, so crossing and curving among one another, that the eye lost them. And
then some of them appeared to start with the fixed intention of going five hundred miles,
and all of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant barrier, or turned off into a workshop.
And then others, like intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly
slued round and came back again. And then others were so chock-full of trucks of coal,
others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so gorged with trucks of ballast,
others were so set apart for wheeled objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others
were so bright and clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle
wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in the air (looking much like their masters on
strike), that there was no beginning, middle, or end to the bewilderment.
Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right hand across the lines on
his forehead, which multiplied while he looked down, as if the railway Lines were getting
themselves photographed on that sensitive plate. Then was heard a distant ringing of bells
and blowing of whistles. Then, puppet-looking heads of men popped out of boxes in

perspective, and popped in again. Then, prodigious wooden razors, set up on end, began
shaving the atmosphere. Then, several locomotive engines in several directions began to
scream and be agitated. Then, along one avenue a train came in. Then, along another two
trains appeared that didn't come in, but stopped without. Then, bits of trains broke off.
Then, a struggling horse became involved with them. Then, the locomotives shared the
bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.
"I have not made my next move much clearer by this. No hurry. No need to make up my
mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet the day after. I'll take a walk."
It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it should) that the walk tended to the platform at
which he had alighted, and to Lamps's room. But Lamps was not in his room. A pair of
velveteen shoulders were adapting themselves to one of the impressions on the wall by
Lamps's fireplace, but otherwise the room was void. In passing back to get out of the
station again, he learnt the cause of this vacancy, by catching sight of Lamps on the
opposite line of railway, skipping along the top of a train, from carriage to carriage, and
catching lighted namesakes thrown up to him by a coadjutor.
"He is busy. He has not much time for composing or singing Comic Songs this morning,
I take it."
The direction he pursued now was into the country, keeping very near to the side of one
great Line of railway, and within easy view of others. "I have half a mind,"' he said,
glancing around, "to settle the question from this point, by saying, 'I'll take this set of rails,
or that, or t'other, and stick to it.' They separate themselves from the confusion, out here,
and go their ways."
Ascending a gentle hill of some extent, he came to a few cottages. There, looking about
him as a very reserved man might who had never looked about him in his life before, he
saw some six or eight young children come merrily trooping and whooping from one of
the cottages, and disperse. But not