He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he directed his towards the prospect, saying: “Beautiful, indeed!”
“Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had a fancy that I would like to sit up, for once, only to try how it looks to an erect head. But what a foolish fancy that would be to encourage! It cannot look more lovely to any one than it does to me.”
Her eyes were turned to it, as she spoke, with most delighted admiration and enjoyment. There was not a trace in it of any sense of deprivation.
“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.”
“So I’ve heerd on, sir, so I’ve heerd on,” returned Lamps. “It’s your being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train, that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for Nowhere. No offence in my having called you by it when took by surprise, I hope, sir?”
“None at all. It’s as good a name for me as any other you could call me by. But may I ask you a question in the corner here?”
Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his daughter’s couch by one of the buttons of his velveteen jacket.
“Is this the bedside where you sing your songs?”
Lamps nodded.
The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder, and they faced about again.
“Upon my word, my dear,” said Lamps then to his daughter, looking from her to her visitor, “it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if this gentleman will excuse me) take a rounder.”
Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out his oily handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear. After this operation he shone exceedingly.
“It’s according to my custom when particular warmed up by any agitation, sir,” he offered by way of apology. “And really, I am throwed into that state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phoebe, that I—that I think I will, if you’ll excuse me, take another rounder.” Which he did, seeming to be greatly restored by it.
They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she was working at her lace-pillow. “Your daughter tells me,” said Barbox Brothers, still in a half-reluctant shamefaced way, “that she never sits up.”
“No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her mother (who died when she was a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as she had never mentioned to me that she WAS subject to fits, they couldn’t be guarded against. Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and this happened.”
“It was very wrong of her,” said Barbox Brothers with a knitted brow, “to marry you, making a secret of her infirmity.’
“Well, sir!” pleaded Lamps in behalf of the long-deceased. “You see, Phoebe and me, we have talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such a number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, and what with misfits, of one sort and another, that if we confessed to ‘em all before we got married, most of us might never get married.”
“Might not that be for the better?”
“Not in this case, sir,” said Phoebe, giving her hand to her father.
“No, not in this case, sir,” said her father, patting it between his own.
“You correct me,” returned Barbox Brothers with a blush; “and I must look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to confess to THAT infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more about yourselves. I hardly knew how to ask it of you, for I am conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I wish you would.”
“With all our hearts, sir,” returned Lamps gaily for both. “And first of all, that you may know my name—”
“Stay!” interposed the visitor with a slight flush. “What signifies your name? Lamps is name enough for me. I like it. It is bright and expressive. What do I want more?”
“Why, to be sure, sir,” returned Lamps. “I have in general no other name down at the Junction; but I thought, on account of your being here as a first-class single, in a private character, that you might—”
The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps acknowledged the mark of confidence by taking another rounder.
“You are hard-worked, I take for granted?” said Barbox Brothers, when the subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than be went into it.
Lamps was beginning, “Not particular so”—when his daughter took him up.
“Oh yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen hours a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time.”
“And you,” said Barbox Brothers, “what with your school, Phoebe, and what with your lace-making—”
“But my school is a pleasure to me,” she interrupted, opening her brown eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse. “I began it when I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company, don’t you see? THAT was not work. I carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. THAT is not work. I do it as love, not as work. Then my lace-pillow;” her busy hands had stopped, as if her argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at the name; “it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my tunes when I hum any, and THAT’S not work. Why, you yourself thought it was music, you know, sir. And so it is to me.”
“Everything is!” cried Lamps radiantly. “Everything is music to her, sir.”
“My father is, at any rate,” said Phoebe, exultingly pointing her thin forefinger at him. “There is more music in my father than there is in a brass band.”
“I say! My dear! It’s very fillyillially done, you know; but you are flattering your father,” he protested, sparkling.