“Mr Gurwood!” she exclaimed in some alarm.
Beginning, from the mere force of habit, some half-delirious reference to the weather, Edwin suddenly stopped, passed his fingers wildly through his hair, and again said, with deep earnestness,—“Emma.”
Emma looked down, blushed, and said nothing.
“Emma,” he said again, “my good angel, my guiding-star—by night and by day—for years I have—”
At that moment Captain Lee entered the room.
Edwin leaped up and stood erect. Emma buried her face in the sofa cushions.
“Edwin—Mr Gurwood!” exclaimed Captain Lee.
This was the beginning of a conversation which terminated eventually in the transference of the nut-brown hair and lustrous eyes to the artist’s villa in Clatterby. As there was a good garden round the villa, and the wife with nut-brown hair was uncommonly fond of flowers, Edwin looked out for a gardener. It was at this identical time that John Marrot resolved to resign his situation as engine-driver on the Grand National Trunk Railway. Edwin, knowing that he had imbibed a considerable amount of knowledge of gardening from Loo, at once offered to employ him as his gardener; John gladly closed with the offer, and thus it came about that he and his wife removed to the villa and left their old railway-ridden cottage in possession of Will and Loo—or, to be more correct, Mr and Mrs Garvie, and all the young Garvies.
But what of timid Mrs Tipps? The great accident did little for her beyond shaking her nervous system, and confirming her in the belief that railways were unutterably detestable; that she was not quite sure whether or not they were sinful; that, come what might, she never would enter one again; and that she felt convinced she had been born a hundred years too late, in which latter opinion most of her friends agreed with her, although they were glad, considering her loveable disposition, that the mistake had occurred. Netta did not take quite such an extreme view, and Joseph laughed at and quizzed them both, in an amiable sort of fashion, on their views.
Among all the sufferers by that accident few suffered so severely—with the exception: of course, of those who lost their lives—as the Grand National Trunk Railway itself. In the course of the trials that followed, it was clearly shown that the company had run the train much more with the view of gratifying the public than of enriching their coffers, from the fact that the utmost possible sum which they could hope to draw by it was 17 pounds, for which sum they had carried 600 passengers upwards of twenty miles. The accident took place in consequence of circumstances over which the company had no control, and the results were—that twenty persons were killed and about two hundred wounded! that one hundred and sixty claims were made for compensation—one hundred and forty of which, being deemed exorbitant or fraudulent, were defended in court; and that, eventually, the company had to pay from seventy to eighty thousand pounds! out of which the highest sum paid to one individual was 6750 pounds! The risks that are thus run by railway companies will be seen to be excessive, especially when it is considered that excursion trains afford but slight remuneration, while many of them convey enormous numbers of passengers. On the occasion of the first excursion from Oxford to London, in 1851, fifty-two of the broad-gauge carriages of the Great Western were employed, and the excursionists numbered upwards of three thousand five hundred—a very town on wheels! Truly the risks of railway companies are great, and their punishments severe.