My mother always
complimented their nurse on the extraordinarily tidy appearance the
children presented after they had been twelve hours or more on the
road; she little knew that the nurse carried a cane, and that any
child who fidgeted ever so slightly at once received two smart cuts on
the hand from this cane, so that their ultra-neat appearance on
arriving at their destination was achieved rather painfully. This
Clarence was an unusually comfortable and easy-rolling carriage; it
hung on Cee springs, and was far more heavily padded than a modern
vehicle; it had vast pockets arranged round its capacious grey
interior, and curious little circular pillows for the head were
suspended by cords from its roof. On account of its comfort it was
much used in its old age for station-work in Ireland. Should that old
carriage have had any feelings, I can thoroughly sympathise with them.
Dreaming away in its coach-house over its varied past, it must have
remembered the vine-clad hills through which it had once rolled on the
banks of the swift-flowing, green Rhone. It cannot have forgotten the
orange groves and olives of sunny Provence overhanging the deep-blue
Mediterranean, the plains of Northern Italy where the vines were
festooned from tree to tree, the mountains and clear streams of the
Tyrol, or the sleepy old Belgian cities melodious with the clash of
many bells.
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