"Pend it."

The knock-down promptitude of this reply
leaving him not a leg to stand upon, Barbox
Brothers produced the twopence with great
lameness, and withdrew in a state of
humiliation.

But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he
passed the cottage, he acknowledged its
presence there with a gesture, which was not a
nod, not a bow, not a removal of his hat from
his head, but was a diffident compromise
between or struggle with all three. The eyes
in the face seemed amused, or cheered, or both,
and the lips modestly said: " Good day to you,
sir."

"I find I must stick for a time to Mugby
Junction," said Barbox Brothers, with much
gravity, after once more stopping on his return
road to look at the Lines where they went their
several ways so quietly. " I can't make up my
mind yet, which iron road to take. In fact, I
must get a little accustomed to the Junction
before I can decide."

So, he announced at the Inn that he was
"going to stay on, for the present," and improved
his acquaintance with the Junction that
night, and again next morning, and again next
night and morning: going down to the station,
mingling with the people there, looking about
him down all the avenues of railway, and
beginning to take an interest in the incomings
and outgoings of the trains. At first, he often
put his head into Lamps's little room, but he
never found Lamps there. A pair or two
of velveteen shoulders he usually found there,
stooping over the fire, sometimes in connexion
with a clasped knife and a piece of bread
and meat; but the answer to his inquiry,
"Where's Lamps?" was, either that he was
"t'other side the line," or, that it was his off-
time, or (in the latter case), his own personal
introduction to another Lamps who was not his
Lamps. However, he was not so desperately
set upon seeing Lamps now, but he bore the
disappointment. Nor did he so wholly
devote himself to his severe application to the
study of Mugby Junction, as to neglect exercise.
On the contrary, he took a walk every day,
and always the same walk. But the weather
turned cold and wet again, and the window was
never open.

                                    iii

At length, after a lapse of some days, there
came another streak of fine bright hardy autumn
weather. It was a Saturday. The window
was open, and the children were gone. Not
surprising, this, for he had patiently watched
and waited at the corner, until they were gone.

"Good day," he said to the face; absolutely
getting his hat clear off his head this time.

"Good day to you, sir."

"I am glad you have a fine sky again, to
look at."

"Thank you, sir. It is kind of you."

"You are an invalid, I fear?"

"No, sir. I have very good health."

"But are you not always lying down?"

"O yes, I am always lying down, because I
cannot sit up. But I am not an invalid."

The laughing eyes seemed highly lo enjoy his
great mistake.

"Would you mind taking the trouble to
come in, sir? There is a beautiful view from
this window. And you would see that I am not
at all ill——being so good as to care."

It was said to help him, as he stood irresolute,
but evidently desiring to enter, with his
diffident hand on the latch of the garden gate.
It did help him, and he went in.

The room up-stairs was a very clean white
room with a low roof. Its only inmate lay on
a couch that brought her face to a level with
the window. The couch was white too; and her
simple dress or wrapper being light blue, like
the band around her hair, she had an ethereal
look, and a fanciful appearance of lying among
clouds. He felt that she instinctively perceived
him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man;
it was another help to him to have established
that understanding so easily, and got it over.

There was an awkward constraint upon him,
nevertheless, as he touched her hand, and took
a chair at the side of her couch.

"I see now," he began, not at all fluently,
"how you occupy your hands. Only seeing
you from the path outside, I thought you were
playing upon something."

She was engaged in very nimbly and
dexterously making lace. A lace-pillow lay upon
her breast; and the quick movements and
changes of her hands upon it as she worked,
had given them the action he had misinterpreted.

"That is curious," she answered, with a
bright smile. " For I often fancy, myself, that
I play tunes while I am at work."

"Have you any musical knowledge?"

She shook her head.

"I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any
instrument, which could be made as handy to
me as my lace-pillow. But I dare say I deceive
myself. ' At all events, I shall never know."

"You have a musical voice. Excuse me; I
have heard you sing."

"With the children?" she answered, slightly
colouring. "O yes. I sing with the dear children,
if it can be called singing."

Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small
forms in the room, and hazarded the speculation
that she was fond of children, and that she was
learned in new systems of teaching them?
"Very fond of them," she said, shaking her
head again; "but I know nothing of teaching,
beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure
it gives me when they learn. Perhaps
your overhearing my little scholars sing some of
their lessons, has led you so far astray as to think
me a grand teacher? Ah! I thought so! No, I
have only read and been told about that system.
It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to
treat them so like the merry Robins they are,
that I took up with it in my little way. You
don't need to be told what a very little way
mine is, sir," she added, with a glance at the
small forms and round the room.