Hereupon, let me offer a suggestion—everybody now is allowed to do so, though nobody ever takes it. My suggestion is, that no man should be allowed to drive an engine without having served a twelvemonthʼs apprenticeship as an omnibus conductor. I donʼt mean to say it would improve his morals—probably rather otherwise; but it would teach him the habit of looking round; it would let him know that there really is more than one quarter of the heavens. At present, all engine–drivers seem afraid of being turned into pillars of salt. So they fix themselves, like pillars of stone, and stare, _ἀχηνίαις ὀμμάτων_, through their square glass spectacles. When one of the railway bajuli—who are, on the whole, very good sort of fellows, and deserve their Christmas–boxes—came home in the cab with Cradock and Wena at the expense of the Company (which was boasted of next board–day)—when one of them came home with Crad—for Morshead had double work again—Polly Ducksacre went into strong hysterics, and it required two married men and a boy to get her out of the potato–bin. It was all up with our Crad that night. The overwork of brain and muscle, the presence of mind required all the time when his mind was especially absent, the impossibility of thinking out any of his trains of ideas when a train of trucks was upon him, the native indignation of a man at knowing that his blood is meant to ebb down a railway sewer, and a new broom will sweep him clean—all these worries and wraths together, cogging into the mill–wheel of cares already grinding, had made such a mill–clack in his head near the left temple, where the thump was, that he could only roll on his narrow bed at imminent risk of a floor–bump. Then the cold, long harbouring, struck into his heart and reins; and he knew not that Dr. Tink came, and was learned and diagnostic upon him; nor even that Polly Ducksacre took his feet out of bed, and rubbed them until her wrists gave way; and then, half ashamed of her womanhood, sneaked away, and cried over Wena. Wenaʼs foot was put into splinters, Wenaʼs tail was stypticised; but no skill could save her master from a furious brain–fever. CHAPTER XI. Leaving the son on his narrow hard pallet, to toss and toss, and turn and turn, and probably get bed–sores, let us see how the father was speeding. Sir Cradock Nowell sat all alone in his little breakfast–room, soon after the funeral of his brother, and before Eoa came to him. For the simple, hot–hearted girl fell so ill after she heard of her loss, and recovered from the narcotic, that Biddy OʼGaghan, who got on famously with the people at the Crown, would not hear of her being moved yet, and drove Dr. Hutton all down the stairs, “with a word of sinse on the top of him,” when he claimed his right of attending upon the girl he had known in India.