laything--but must get into
right down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not so I do
not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far out-done by the serious and
believing ways of the Major in the management of the United Grand
Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, "For" says my
Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened, "we must have a
whole mouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public" and there the young
rogue kissed me, "won't stump up." So the Public took the shares--ten at
ninepence, and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference at one
and sixpence--and they were all signed by Jemmy and countersigned by the
Major, and between ourselves much better worth the money than some shares
I have paid for in my time. In the same holidays the line was made and
worked and opened and ran excursions and had collisions and burst its
boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences all most regular correct
and pretty. The sense of responsibility entertained by the Major as a
military style of station-master my dear starting the down train behind
time and ringing one of those little bells that you buy with the little
coal-scuttles off the tray round the man's neck in the street did him
honour, but noticing the Major of a night when he is writing out his
monthly report to Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock and
the Permanent Way and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major's
sideboard and dusted with his own hands every morning before varnishing
his boots) I notice him as full of thought and care as full can be and
frowning in a fearful manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by halves
as witness his great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he
has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and a measuring-tape and driving I
don't know what improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fully
believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside down by Act of
Parliament. As please Heaven will come to pass when Jemmy takes to that
as a profession!

Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest brother
the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would be hard to say unless
Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper
know a morsel of except continually being summoned to the County Court
and having orders made upon him which he runs away from, and once was
taken in the passage of this very house with an umbre