my mind of those monsters
is give me a landlord's or landlady's wholesome face when I come off a
journey and not a brass plate with an electrified number clicking out of
it which it's not in nature can be glad to see me and to which I don't
want to be hoisted like molasses at the Docks and left there telegraphing
for help with the most ingenious instruments but quite in vain--being
here my dear I have no call to mention that I am still in the Lodgings as
a business hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to the clergy
partly read over at Saint Clement's Danes and concluded in Hatfield
churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and
dust to dust.

Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling you that the Major
is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roof of the
house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest and has ever had
kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother Mrs. Edson
being deserted in the second floor and dying in my arms, fully believing
that I am his born Gran and him an orphan, though what with engineering
since he took a taste for it and him and the Major making Locomotives out
of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels and them absolutely a
getting off the line and falling over the table and injuring the
passengers almost equal to the originals it really is quite wonderful.
And when I says to the Major, "Major can't you by _any_ means give us a
communication with the guard?" the Major says quite huffy, "No madam it's
not to be done," and when I says "Why not?" the Major says, "That is
between us who are in the Railway Interest madam and our friend the Right
Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade" and if you'll believe me
my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at school to consult him on the answer I
should have before I could get even that amount of unsatisfactoriness out
of the man, the reason being that when we first began with the little
model and the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in general as
wrong as the real) and when I says laughing "What appointment am I to
hold in this undertaking gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round the neck and
tells me dancing, "You shall be the Public Gran" and consequently they
put upon me just as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in my
easy-chair.

My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the Major cannot give
half his heart and mind to anything--even a p