“And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and steam changing places so fast, make it so lively for me,” she went on. “I think of the number of people who can go where they wish, on their business, or their pleasure; I remember that the puffs make signs to me that they are actually going while I look; and that enlivens the prospect with abundance of company, if I want company. There is the great Junction, too. I don’t see it under the foot of the hill, but I can very often hear it, and I always know it is there. It seems to join me, in a way, to I don’t know how many places and things that I shall never see.”
With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined himself to something he had never seen, he said constrainedly: “Just so.”
“And so you see, sir,” pursued Phoebe, “I am not the invalid you thought me, and I am very well off indeed.”
“You have a happy disposition,” said Barbox Brothers: perhaps with a slight excusatory touch for his own disposition.
“Ah! But you should know my father,” she replied. “His is the happy disposition!—Don’t mind, sir!” For his reserve took the alarm at a step upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he would be set down for a troublesome intruder. “This is my father coming.”
The door opened, and the father paused there.
“Why, Lamps!” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his chair. “How do you do, Lamps?”
To which Lamps responded: “The gentleman for Nowhere! How do you DO, sir?”
And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of Lamp’s daughter.
“I have looked you up half-a-dozen times since that night,” said Barbox Brothers, “but have never found you.”