“Well, I won’t do it any more, though ’tain’t easy to change one’s ’abits. But how is it, sir, that that there electricity works? That’s what I wants to know. Does the words run along the cable,—or ’ow?”
“Of course they do, Stumpy,” interrupted Slagg, “they run along the cable like a lot o’ little tightrope dancers, an’ when they come to the end o’t they jumps off an’ ranges ’temselves in a row. Sometimes, in coorse, they spells wrong, like bad schoolboys, and then they’ve to be walloped an’ set right.”
“Hold your noise, Slagg, an’ let your betters speak,” returned Stumps.
“Well, if they don’t exactly do that,” said Sam Shipton, “there are people who think they can do things even more difficult. I remember once, when I was clerk at a country railroad station and had to work the telegraph, an old woman came into the ticket office in a state of wild despair. She was about the size and shape of Meerta there, but with about an inch and a half more nose, and two or three ounces less brain.
“‘What’s wrong, madam?’ I asked, feeling quite sorry for the poor old thing.
“‘Oh! sir,’ said she, clasping her hands, ‘I’ve bin an’ left my passel,—a brown paper one it was,—on the seat at the last station, an’ there was a babby’s muffler in it—the sweetest thing as ever was—an’ f–fi’ pun t–ten, on’y one sh–shillin’ was b–bad—boo-hoo!’
“She broke down entirely at this point, so, said I, ‘Madam, make your mind quite easy, sit down, and I’ll telegraph at once,’ so I telegraphed, and got a reply back immediately that the parcel had been found all right, and would be sent on as soon as possible. I told this to the old lady, who seemed quite pleased, and went on to the platform to wait.
“I was pretty busy for the next quarter of an hour, for it was market day at the next town, but I noticed through the window that the old lady was standing on the platform, gazing steadily up at the sky.
“‘Broxley—third class,’ said a big farmer at that moment, with a head like one of his own turnips.
“I gave him his ticket, and for five minutes more I was kept pretty busy, when up came the train; in got the struggling crowd; whew! went the whistle, and away went the whole affair, leaving no one on the platform but the porter, and the old woman still staring up at the sky.