I don’t think she need have put it so baldly as that.
If by some miraculous chance there should be any profits from the sale of this book, I intend to devote them to the purchase of a cow (or hen, if it doesn’t run to a cow), to aid the national larder. I shall call it “the Memorial Cow,” in memory of those who have been good enough to assist in its purchase.
Should any reader wish to have the cow (or hen) named specially after him—or her—self this could doubtless be arranged. Particulars on application to the publisher.
II
About Getting There
We always consider that emancipation takes place at one exact spot on the Great Western Railway; the only difficulty is that Virginia and I never agree as to which is the exact spot.
Virginia insists that the air suddenly changes just beyond Chepstow Station, where we change from the London and South Wales main line to the local train that, two or three times a day (week-days only), runs through our particular Valley, like a small boy’s toy affair.
This train, which makes up in black smoke for what it lacks of other dignity, steams out of the main line junction with an important snort and rumble; over the bridge it goes, and the stranger would imagine it was well under way. But no; it then comes to a standstill at the point where the main line and the Valley line meet, in order that the gentleman who lives—we presume—in the signal-box (but who is always standing on the railway line when we see him) may hand to our engine-driver a metal staff—some sort of a key, they tell me, which is said to unlock the single railway line. I don’t pretend to understand the process myself. I only know that our engine-driver looks lovingly at it as though it were the apple of his eye (I’ve craned my head out of the window, that’s how I know), and clasps it to his chest, until he gets to the first station on the Valley line, where he hands it over to the station-master, who, in turn, gives him another one, to which he clings just as pathetically.