I might a'most
call it our deadest and buriedest time."
"No porters about?"
"Well, sir, you see," returned Lamps, confidential again, "they in
general goes off with the gas. That's how it is. And they seem to have
overlooked you, through your walking to the furder end of the platform.
But, in about twelve minutes or so, she may be up."
"Who may be up?"
"The three forty-two, sir. She goes off in a sidin' till the Up X
passes, and then she"--here an air of hopeful vagueness pervaded
Lamps--"does all as lays in her power."
"I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement."
"I doubt if anybody do, sir. She's a Parliamentary, sir. And, you see,
a Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun--"
"Do you mean an Excursion?"
"That's it, sir.--A Parliamentary or a Skirmishun, she mostly _does_ go
off into a sidin'. But, when she _can_ get a chance, she's whistled out
of it, and she's whistled up into doin' all as,"--Lamps again wore the
air of a highly sanguine man who hoped for the best,--"all as lays in her
power."
He then explained that the porters on duty, being required to be in
attendance on the Parliamentary matron in question, would doubtless turn
up with the gas. In the meantime, if the gentleman would not very much
object to the smell of lamp-oil, and would accept the warmth of his
little room--The gentleman, being by this time very cold, instantly
closed with the proposal.
A greasy little cabin it was, suggestive, to the sense of smell, of a
cabin in a Whaler. But there was a bright fire burning in its rusty
grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden stand of newly trimmed and
lighted lamps, ready for carriage service. They made a bright show, and
their light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity of the room, as
borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on a form by
the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of stooping velveteen
shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various untidy shelves accommodated a
quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a fragrant collection of what
looked like the pocket-handkerchiefs of the whole lamp family.
As Barbox Brothers (so to call the traveller on the warranty of his
luggage) took his seat upon the form, and warmed his now ungloved hands
at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal desk, much blotched with
ink, which his elbow touched. Upon it were some scraps of coarse paper,
and a superannuated steel pen in very reduced and gritty circumstances.
From glancing at the scraps of paper, he turned involuntarily to his
host, and said, with some roughness:
"Why, you are never a poet, man?"
Lamps had certainly not the conventional appearance of one, as he stood
modestly rubbing his squab nose with a handkerchief so exceedingly oily,
that he might have been in the act of mistaking himself for one of his
charges. He was a spare man of about the Barbox Brothers time of life,
with his features whimsically drawn upward as if they were attracted by
the roots of his hair. He had a peculiarly shining transparent
complexion, probably occasioned by constant oleaginous application; and
his attractive hair, being cut short, and being grizzled, and standing
straight up on end as if it in its turn were attracted by some invisible
magnet above it, the top of his head was not very unlike a lamp-wick.
"But, to be sure, it's no business of mine," said Barbox Brothers. "That
was an impertinent observation on my part.
