Jock and Mhor looked back on the time Lord Bidborough spent in
Priorsford as one long, rosy dream.
It is true they had to go to school as usual, and learn their home
lessons, but their lack of attention in school-hours must have sorely
tried their teachers, and their home lessons were crushed into the
smallest space of time so as not to interfere with the crowded hours of
glorious living that Lord Bidborough managed to make for them.
That nobleman turned out to be the most gifted player that Jock and
Mhor had ever met. There seemed no end to the games he could invent, and
he played with a zest that carried everyone along with him.
Mhor's great passion was for trains. He was no budding engineering
genius; he cared nothing about knowing what made the wheels go round; it
was the trains themselves, the glorious, puffing, snorting engines, the
comfortable guards' vans, and the signal-boxes that enchanted him. He
thought a signalman's life was one of delirious happiness; he thrilled
at the sight of a porter's uniform, and hoped that one day he too might
walk abroad dressed like that, wheel people's luggage on a trolley and
touch his hat when given tips. It was his great treat to stand on the
iron railway-bridge and watch the trains snorting deliriously
underneath, but the difficulty was he might not go alone, and as
everyone in the house fervently disliked the task of accompanying him,
it was a treat that came all too seldom for the Mhor.
It turned out that Lord Bidborough also delighted in trains, and he not
only stood patiently on the bridge watching goods-trains shunting up and
down, but he made friends with the porters, and took Mhor into
prohibited areas such as signal-boxes and goods sheds, and showed him
how signals were worked, and ran him up and down on trolleys.
One never-to-be-forgotten day a sympathetic engine-driver lifted Mhor
into the engine and, holding him up high above the furnace, told him to
pull a chain, whereupon the engine gave an anguished hoot. Mhor had no
words to express his pleasure, but in an ecstasy of gratitude he seized
the engine-driver's grimy hand and kissed it, leaving that honest man,
who was not accustomed to such ongoings considerably confused.
Jock did not share Mhor's interest in "base mechanic happenings"; his
passion was for the world at large, his motto, "For to admire and for to
see." He had long made up his mind that he must follow some profession
that would take him to far places. Mrs. Hope suggested the Indian Army,
while Mr. Jowett loyally recommended the Indian Civil Service, though he
felt bound in duty to warn Jock that it wasn't what it was in his young
days, and was indeed hardly fit now for a white man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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