Chapter II--Barbox Brothers and Co.

Mugby Junction

by Charles Dickens

With good-will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere
began, on the very next day, his researches at the heads of the seven
roads. The results of his researches, as he and Phoebe afterwards
set them down in fair writing, hold their due places in this
veracious chronicle. But they occupied a much longer time in the
getting together than they ever will in the perusal. And this is
probably the case with most reading matter, except when it is of that
highly beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is "thrown off in a few
moments of leisure" by the superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take
prose pains.

It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried
himself. His heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in
it. There was the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes
sitting by, listening to Phoebe as she picked out more and more
discourse from her musical instrument, and as her natural taste and
ear refined daily upon her first discoveries. Besides being a
pleasure, this was an occupation, and in the course of weeks it
consumed hours. It resulted that his dreaded birthday was close upon
him before he had troubled himself any more about it.

The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance
that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly,
on a few rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected
were, after all, in nowise assisted by his investigations. For, he
had connected this interest with this road, or that interest with the
other, but could deduce no reason from it for giving any road the
preference. Consequently, when the last council was holden, that
part of the business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in
the beginning.

"But, sir," remarked Phoebe, "we have only six roads after all.
Is the seventh road dumb?"

"The seventh road? Oh!" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin.
"That is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little
present. That is its story. Phoebe."

"Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with
hesitation.

"Not in the least; it is a great high-road after all."

"I should like you to take it," returned Phoebe with a
persuasive smile, "for the love of that little present which must
ever be so dear to me. I should like you to take it, because that
road can never be again like any other road to me. I should like you
to take it, in remembrance of your having done me so much good: of
your having made me so much happier! If you leave me by the road you
travelled when you went to do me this great kindness," sounding a
faint chord as she spoke, "I shall feel, lying here watching at my
window, as if it must conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you
back some day."

"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done."

So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for
Somewhere, and his destination was the great ingenious town.

He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the
eighteenth of December when he left it. "High time," he reflected,
as he seated himself in the train, "that I started in earnest! Only
one clear day remains between me and the day I am running away from.
I'll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow. I'll go to
Wales."

It was with some pains that he placed before himself the
undeniable advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for
his senses from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild
seashore, and rugged roads. And yet he scarcely made them out as
distinctly as he could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite
of her new resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness
upon her now--just at first--that she had not had before; whether she
saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the
train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow
on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether,
in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not
unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in
life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a great healer, if
he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other similar
meditations got between him and his Welsh picture. There was within
him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from an
object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this
sense, being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in losing
Mugby Junction, he had found himself again; and he was not the more
enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time in better
company.

But surely here, not far ahead, must be the great ingenious
town. This crashing and clashing that the train was undergoing, and
this coupling on to it of a multitude of new echoes, could mean
nothing less than approach to the great station. It did mean nothing
less. After some stormy flashes of town lightning, in the way of
swift revelations of red brick blocks of houses, high red brick
chimney- shafts, vistas of red brick railway arches, tongues of fire,
blocks of smoke, valleys of canal, and hills if coal, there came the
thundering in at the journey's end.

Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he
chose, and having appointed his dinner hour, Barbox Brothers went out
for a walk in the busy streets. And now it began to be suspected by
him that Mugby Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as
well as visible, and had joined him to an endless number of by-ways.
For, whereas he would, but a little while ago, have walked these
streets blindly brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new
external world. How the many toiling people lived, and loved, and
died; how wonderful it was to consider the various trainings of eye
and hand, the nice distinctions of sight and touch, that separated
them into classes of workers, and even into classes of workers at
subdivisions of one complete whole which combined their many
intelligences and forces, though of itself but some cheap object of
use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such
assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of
their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not
deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies
of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and
yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first
evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he
stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their
popular studies and amusements on the public walls); these
considerations, and a host of such, made his walk a memorable one. "I
too am but a little part of a great whole," he began to think; "and
to be serviceable to myself and others, or to be happy, I must cast
my interest into, and draw it out of, the common stock."

Although he had arrived at his journey's end for the day by
noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so
long that the lamp-lighters were now at their work in the streets,
and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn
towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a very
little hand crept into his, and a very little voice said:

"Oh! if you please, I am lost!"

He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.

"Yes," she said, confirming her words with a serious nod. "I am
indeed. I am lost!"

Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help,
descried none, and said, bending low.

"Where do you live, my child?"

"I don't know where I live," she returned. "I am lost."

"What is your name?"

"Polly."

"What is your other name?"

The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.

Imitating the sound as he caught it, he hazarded the guess,
"Trivits."

"Oh no!" said the child, shaking her head. "Nothing like
that."

"Say it again, little one."

An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a different
sound.

He made the venture, " Paddens?"

"Oh no!" said the child. "Nothing like that."

"Once more. Let us try it again, dear."

A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four
syllables. "It can't be Tappitarver?" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing
his head with his hat in discomfiture.

"No! It ain't," the child quietly assented.

On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with
extraordinary efforts at distinctness, it swelled into eight
syllables at least.

"Ah! I think," said Barbox Brothers with a desperate air of
resignation, "that we had better give it up."

"But I am lost," said the child, nestling her little hand more
closely in his, "and you'll take care of me, won't you?"

If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion
on the one hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the
other, here the man was. "Lost!" he repeated, looking down at the
child. "I am sure I am. What is to be done?"

"Where do you live?" asked the child, looking up at him
wistfully.

"Over there," he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of
his hotel.

"Hadn't we better go there?" said the child.

"Really," he replied, "I don't know but what we had."

So they set off, hand-in-hand. He, through comparison of
himself against his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as
if he had just developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated
in her own tiny opinion by having got him so neatly out of his
embarrassment.

"We are going to have dinner when we get there, I suppose?" said
Polly.

"Well," he rejoined, "I--Yes, I suppose we are."

"Do you like your dinner?" asked the child.

"Why, on the whole," said Barbox Brothers, "yes, I think I
do."

"I do mine," said Polly. "Have you any brothers and
sisters?"

"No. Have you?"

"Mine are dead."

"Oh!" said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of
unwieldiness of mind and body weighing him down, he would have not
known how to pursue the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but
that the child was always ready for him.

"What," she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, "are
you going to do to amuse me after dinner?"

"Upon my soul, Polly," exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a
loss, "I have not the slightest idea!"

"Then I tell you what," said Polly. "Have you got any cards at
your house?"

"Plenty," said Barbox Brothers in a boastful vein.

"Very well. Then I'll build houses, and you shall look at me.
You mustn't blow, you know."

"Oh no," said Barbox Brothers. "No, no, no. No blowing.
Blowing's not fair."

He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an
idiotic monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness
of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his
hopeful opinion of himself by saying compassionately: "What a funny
man you are!"

Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute
grew bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave
himself up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to be
led in triumph by all-conquering Jack than he to be bound in slavery
to Polly.

"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "No."

"What a dunce you must be, mustn't you?" said Polly.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "Yes."

"Would you like me to teach you a story? But you must remember
it, you know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else
afterwards."

He professed that it would afford him the highest mental
gratification to be taught a story, and that he would humbly
endeavour to retain it in his mind. Whereupon Polly, giving her hand
a new little turn in his, expressive of settling down for enjoyment,
commenced a long romance, of which every relishing clause began with
the words: "So this," or, "And so this." As, "So this boy;" or, "So
this fairy;" or, "And so this pie was four yards round, and two yards
and a quarter deep." The interest of the romance was derived from
the intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy
appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this pie, and
this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and swelled and
swelled. There were many tributary circumstances, but the forcible
interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie, and the
bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers,
with serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on the
pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of
the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by, and found
deficient.

Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say at the
bar, and said awkwardly enough; "I have found a little girl!"

The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl.
Nobody knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it
forth--except one chamber-maid, who said it was Constantinople--
which it wasn't.

"I will dine with my young friend in a private room," said
Barbox Brothers to the hotel authorities, "and perhaps you will be so
good as to let the police know that the pretty baby is here. I
suppose she is sure to be inquired for soon, if she has not been
already. Come along, Polly."

Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the
stairs rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers. The
dinner was a most transcendant success, and the Barbox sheepishness,
under Polly's directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to
diffuse gravy over the plate with a liberal and equal hand, was
another fine sight.

"And now," said Polly, "while we are at dinner, you be good, and
tell me that story I taught you."

With the tremors of a Civil Service examination upon him, and
very uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie
appeared in history, but also as to the measurements of that
indispensable fact, Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under
encouragement did very fairly. There was a want of breadth
observable in his rendering of the cheeks, as well as the appetite,
of the boy; and there was a certain tameness in his fairy, referable
to an under-current of desire to account for her. Still, as the
first lumbering performance of a good-humoured monster, it passed
muster.

"I told you to be good," said Polly, "and you are good, ain't
you?"

"I hope so," replied Barbox Brothers.

Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of
sofa cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a pat
or two on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and even with a
gracious kiss. In getting on her feet upon her chair, however, to
give him this last reward, she toppled forward among the dishes, and
caused him to exclaim, as he effected her rescue: "Gracious Angels!
Whew! I thought we were in the fire, Polly!"

"What a coward you are, ain't you?" said Polly when replaced.

"Yes, I am rather nervous," he replied. "Whew! Don't, Polly!
Don't flourish your spoon, or you'll go over sideways. Don't tilt up
your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you'll go over backwards. Whew!
Polly, Polly, Polly," said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to
despair, "we are environed with dangers!"

Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that were
yawning for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to sit upon
a low stool. "I will, if you will," said Polly. So, as peace of
mind should go before all, he begged the waiter to wheel aside the
table, bring a pack of cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen,
and close in Polly and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug
room within the room. Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers
on his footstool, with a pint decanter on the rug, contemplating
Polly as she built successfully, and growing blue in the face with
holding his breath, lest he should blow the house down.

"How you stare, don't you?" said Polly in a houseless pause.

Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit,
apologetically:

"I am afraid I was looking rather hard at you, Polly."

"Why do you stare?" asked Polly.

"I cannot," he murmured to himself, "recall why.--I don't know,
Polly."

"You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, mustn't
you?" said Polly.

In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again
intently, as she bent her head over her card structure, her rich
curls shading her face. "It is impossible," he thought, "that I can
ever have seen this pretty baby before. Can I have dreamed of her?
In some sorrowful dream?"

He could make nothing of it. So he went into the building trade
as a journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four
stories high; even five.

"I say! Who do you think is coming?" asked Polly, rubbing her
eyes after tea.

He guessed: "The waiter?"

"No," said Polly, "the dustman. I am getting sleepy."

A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers!

"I don't think I am going to be fetched to-night," said Polly.
"What do you think?"

He thought not, either. After another quarter of an hour, the
dustman not merely impending, but actually arriving, recourse was had
to the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid: who cheerily undertook that
the child should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, which she
herself would share.

"And I know you will be careful, won't you," said Barbox
Brothers, as a new fear dawned upon him, "that she don't fall out of
bed?"

Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the
necessity of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat on
his footstool picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, with
her dimpled chin on his shoulder.

"Oh, what a coward you are, ain't you?" said Polly. "Do you
fall out of bed?"

"N--not generally, Polly."

"No more do I."

With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him
going, and then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be
swallowed up in the hand of the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid,
trotted off, chattering, without a vestige of anxiety.

He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and
chairs replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the room for
half an hour. "A most engaging little creature, but it's not that.
A most winning little voice, but it's not that. That has much to do
with it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to
know this child? What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I
felt her touch in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her
looking up at me?"

"Mr. Jackson!"

With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice,
and saw his answer standing at the door.

"Oh, Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me! Speak a word of
encouragement to me, I beseech you."

"You are Polly's mother."

"Yes."

Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As you see
what the rose was in its faded leaves; as you see what the summer
growth of the woods was in their wintry branches; so Polly might be
traced, one day, in a careworn woman like this, with her hair turned
grey. Before him were the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned
bright. This was the woman he had loved. This was the woman he had
lost. Such had been the constancy of his imagination to her, so had
Time spared her under its withholding, that now, seeing how roughly
the inexorable hand had struck her, his soul was filled with pity and
amazement.

He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the
chimney- piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half
averted.

"Did you see me in the street, and show me to your child?" he
asked.

"Yes."

"Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit?"

"I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, 'We have lost our
way, and I must try to find mine by myself. Go to that gentleman,
and tell him you are lost. You shall be fetched by-and-by.' Perhaps
you have not thought how very young she is?"

"She is very self-reliant."

"Perhaps because she is so young."

He asked, after a short pause, "Why did you do this?"

"Oh, Mr. Jackson, do you ask me? In the hope that you might see
something in my innocent child to soften your heart towards me. Not
only towards me, but towards my husband."

He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of the
room. He came back again with a slower step, and resumed his former
attitude, saying:

"I thought you had emigrated to America?"

"We did. But life went ill with us there, and we came back."

"Do you live in this town?"

"Yes. I am a daily teacher of music here. My husband is a
book- keeper."

"Are you--forgive my asking--poor?"

"We earn enough for our wants. That is not our distress. My
husband is very, very ill of a lingering disorder. He will never
recover--"

"You check yourself. If it is for want of the encouraging word
you spoke of, take it from me. I cannot forget the old time,
Beatrice."

"God bless you!" she replied with a burst of tears, and gave him
her trembling hand.

"Compose yourself. I cannot be composed if you are not, for to
see you weep distresses me beyond expression. Speak freely to me.
Trust me."

She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while
spoke calmly. Her voice had the ring of Polly's.

"It is not that my husband's mind is at all impaired by his
bodily suffering, for I assure you that is not the case. But in his
weakness, and in his knowledge that he is incurably ill, he cannot
overcome the ascendancy of one idea. It preys upon him, embitters
every moment of his painful life, and will shorten it."

She stopping, he said again: "Speak freely to me. Trust
me."

"We have had five children before this darling, and they all lie
in their little graves. He believes that they have withered away
under a curse, and that it will blight this child like the rest."

"Under what curse?"

"Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very
heavily, and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might
suffer in my mind as he does. This is the constant burden:- 'I
believe, Beatrice, I was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared
to make, though I was so much his junior. The more influence he
acquired in the business, the higher he advanced me, and I was alone
in his private confidence. I came between him and you, and I took
you from him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was
wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so compressed must
have been terrible; the wrath it awakened inappeasable. So, a curse
came to be invoked on our poor, pretty little flowers, and they
fall.'"

"And you, Beatrice," he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and
there had been a silence afterwards, "how say you?"

"Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I
believed that you would never, never forgive."

"Until within these few weeks," he repeated. "Have you changed
your opinion of me within these few weeks?"

"Yes."

"For what reason?"

"I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town,
when, to my terror, you came in. As I veiled my face and stood in
the dark end of the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a
musical instrument for a bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were
so softened, you showed such interest in its selection, you took it
away yourself with so much tenderness of care and pleasure, that I
knew you were a man with a most gentle heart. Oh, Mr. Jackson, Mr.
Jackson, if you could have felt the refreshing rain of tears that
followed for me!"

Was Phoebe playing at that moment on her distant couch? He
seemed to hear her.

"I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get no
information. As I had heard you say that you were going back by the
next train (but you did not say where), I resolved to visit the
station at about that time of day, as often as I could, between my
lessons, on the chance of seeing you again. I have been there very
often, but saw you no more until to-day. You were meditating as you
walked the street, but the calm expression of your face emboldened me
to send my child to you. And when I saw you bend your head to speak
tenderly to her, I prayed to God to forgive me for having ever
brought a sorrow on it. I now pray to you to forgive me, and to
forgive my husband. I was very young, he was young too, and, in the
ignorant hardihood of such a time of life, we don't know what we do
to those who have undergone more discipline. You generous man! You
good man! So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime against
you!"--for he would not see her on her knees, and soothed her as a
kind father might have soothed an erring daughter--"thank you, bless
you, thank you!"

When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the window
curtain and looked out awhile. Then he only said:

"Is Polly asleep?"

"Yes. As I came in, I met her going away upstairs, and put her
to bed myself."

"Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me your
address on this leaf of my pocket-book. In the evening I will bring
her home to you--and to her father."

* * *

"Hallo!" cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face in at the
door next morning when breakfast was ready: "I thought I was fetched
last night?"

"So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here for the
day, and to take you home in the evening."

"Upon my word!" said Polly. "You are very cool, ain't you?"

However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added: "I
suppose I must give you a kiss, though you are cool."

The kiss given and taken, they sat down to breakfast in a highly
conversational tone.

"Of course, you are going to amuse me?" said Polly.

"Oh, of course!" said Barbox Brothers.

In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it
indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little
fat knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down
into her left hand with a business-like slap. After this gathering
of herself together, Polly, by that time a mere heap of dimples,
asked in a wheedling manner:

"What are we going to do, you dear old thing?"

"Why, I was thinking," said Barbox Brothers, "--but are you fond
of horses, Polly?"

"Ponies, I am," said Polly, "especially when their tails are
long. But horses--n-no--too big, you know."

"Well," pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of grave mysterious
confidence adapted to the importance of the consultation, "I did see
yesterday, Polly, on the walls, pictures of two long-tailed ponies,
speckled all over--"

"No, no, no!" cried Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on
the charming details. "Not speckled all over!"

"Speckled all over. Which ponies jump through hoops--"

"No, no, no!" cried Polly as before. "They never jump through
hoops!"

"Yes, they do. Oh, I assure you they do! And eat pie in
pinafores- -"

"Ponies eating pie in pinafores!" said Polly. "What a
story-teller you are, ain't you?"

"Upon my honour.--And fire off guns."

(Polly hardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting to
fire-arms.)

"And I was thinking," pursued the exemplary Barbox, "that if you
and I were to go to the Circus where these ponies are, it would do
our constitutions good."

"Does that mean amuse us?" inquired Polly. "What long words you
do use, don't you?"

Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied:

"That means amuse us. That is exactly what it means. There are
many other wonders besides the ponies, and we shall see them all.
Ladies and gentlemen in spangled dresses, and elephants and lions and
tigers."

Polly became observant of the teapot, with a curled-up nose
indicating some uneasiness of mind.

"They never get out, of course," she remarked as a mere
truism.

"The elephants and lions and tigers? Oh, dear no!"

"Oh, dear no!" said Polly. "And of course nobody's afraid of
the ponies shooting anybody."

"Not the least in the world."

"No, no, not the least in the world," said Polly.

"I was also thinking," proceeded Barbox, "that if we were to
look in at the toy-shop, to choose a doll--"

"Not dressed!" cried Polly with a clap of her hands. "No, no,
no, not dressed!"

"Full-dressed. Together with a house, and all things necessary
for housekeeping--"

Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling into
a swoon of bliss.

"What a darling you are!" she languidly exclaimed, leaning back
in her chair. "Come and be hugged, or I must come and hug you."

This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the
utmost rigour of the law. It being essential to make the purchase of
the doll its first feature--or that lady would have lost the
ponies--the toy-shop expedition took precedence. Polly in the magic
warehouse, with a doll as large as herself under each arm, and a neat
assortment of some twenty more on view upon the counter, did indeed
present a spectacle of indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed
happiness, but the light cloud passed. The lovely specimen oftenest
chosen, oftenest rejected, and finally abided by, was of Circassian
descent, possessing as much boldness of beauty as was reconcilable
with extreme feebleness of mouth, and combining a sky-blue silk
pelisse with rose-coloured satin trousers, and a black velvet hat:
which this fair stranger to our northern shores would seem to have
founded on the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent. The name this
distinguished foreigner brought with her from beneath the glowing
skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly's authority) Miss Melluka, and
the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox
coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that her silver
tea-spoons were as large as her kitchen poker, and that the
proportions of her watch exceeded those of her frying-pan. Miss
Melluka was graciously pleased to express her entire approbation of
the Circus, and so was Polly; for the ponies were speckled, and
brought down nobody when they fired, and the savagery of the wild
beasts appeared to be mere smoke--which article, in fact, they did
produce in large quantities from their insides. The Barbox
absorption in the general subject throughout the realisation of these
delights was again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold
at dinner, when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair
opposite to Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable
spine), and even induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with
due decorum the prevailing glorious idea. To wind up, there came the
agreeable fever of getting Miss Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich
possessions into a fly with Polly, to be taken home. But, by that
time, Polly had become unable to look upon such accumulated joys with
waking eyes, and had withdrawn her consciousness into the wonderful
Paradise of a child's sleep. "Sleep, Polly, sleep," said Barbox
Brothers, as her head dropped on his shoulder; "you shall not fall
out of this bed easily, at any rate!"

What rustling piece of paper he took from his pocket, and
carefully folded into the bosom of Polly's frock, shall not be
mentioned. He said nothing about it, and nothing shall be said about
it. They drove to a modest suburb of the great ingenious town, and
stopped at the fore-court of a small house. "Do not wake the child,"
said Barbox Brothers softly to the driver; "I will carry her in as
she is."

Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by Polly's
mother, Polly's bearer passed on with mother and child in to a
ground-floor room. There, stretched on a sofa, lay a sick man,
sorely wasted, who covered his eyes with his emaciated hand.

"Tresham," said Barbox in a kindly voice, "I have brought you
back your Polly, fast asleep. Give me your hand, and tell me you are
better."

The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head
over the hand into which it was taken, and kissed it. "Thank you,
thank you! I may say that I am well and happy."

"That's brave," said Barbox. "Tresham, I have a fancy--Can you
make room for me beside you here?"

He sat down on the sofa as he said the words, cherishing the
plump peachey cheek that lay uppermost on his shoulder.

"I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old fellow now,
you know, and old fellows may take fancies into their heads
sometimes), to give up Polly, having found her, to no one but you.
Will you take her from me?"

As the father held out his arms for the child, each of the two
men looked steadily at the other.

"She is very dear to you, Tresham?"

"Unutterably dear."

"God bless her! It is not much, Polly," he continued, turning
his eyes upon her peaceful face as he apostrophized her, "it is not
much, Polly, for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on
something so far better than himself as a little child is; but it
would be much--much upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty
soul--if he could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had better
have a millstone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest sea.
Live and thrive, my pretty baby!" Here he kissed her. "Live and
prosper, and become in time the mother of other little children, like
the Angels who behold The Father's face!"

He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, and
went out.

But he went not to Wales. No, he never went to Wales. He went
straightway for another stroll about the town, and he looked in upon
the people at their work, and at their play, here, there, every-
there, and where not. For he was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, and
had taken thousands of partners into the solitary firm.

He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing
before his fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink which he
had stood upon the chimney-piece, when he heard the town clocks
striking, and, referring to his watch, found the evening to have so
slipped away, that they were striking twelve. As he put up his watch
again, his eyes met those of his reflection in the chimney- glass.

"Why, it's your birthday already," he said, smiling. "You are
looking very well. I wish you many happy returns of the day."

He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself. "By
Jupiter!" he discovered, "it alters the whole case of running away
from one's birthday! It's a thing to explain to Phoebe. Besides,
here is quite a long story to tell her, that has sprung out of the
road with no story. I'll go back, instead of going on. I'll go back
by my friend Lamps's Up X presently."

He went back to Mugby Junction, and, in point of fact, he
established himself at Mugby Junction. It was the convenient place
to live in, for brightening Phoebe's life. It was the convenient
place to live in, for having her taught music by Beatrice. It was
the convenient place to live in, for occasionally borrowing Polly. It
was the convenient place to live in, for being joined at will to all
sorts of agreeable places and persons. So, he became settled there,
and, his house standing in an elevated situation, it is noteworthy of
him in conclusion, as Polly herself might (not irreverently) have put
it:

"There was an Old Barbox who lived on a hill,
And if he
ain't gone, he lives there still."

Here follows the substance of what was seen, heard, or otherwise
picked up, by the gentleman for Nowhere, in his careful study of the
Junction.