This, however, seems a thin description of
its glory. For a more adequate description a well-worn phrase must be
borrowed from the poems of Montmorency Minks--a 'Day of Festival,' for
which 'coronal' invariably lay in waiting for rhyming purposes a
little further down the sonnet.
Monkey that afternoon managed to get home earlier than usual from
Neuchatel, a somewhat suspicious explanation as her passport. Her eyes
were popping. Jimbo was always out of the village school at three. He
carried a time-table in his pocket; but it was mere pretence, since he
was a little walking Bradshaw, and knew every train by heart--the
Geneva Express, the Paris Rapide, the 'omnibus' trains, and the
mountain ones that climbed the forest heights towards La Chaux de
Fonds and Le Locle. Of these latter only the white puffing smoke was
visible from the village, but he knew with accuracy their times of
departure, their arrival, and the names of every station where they
stopped. In the omnibus trains he even knew some of the guards
personally, the engine-drivers too. He might be seen any day after
school standing in the field beside the station, waiting for them to
pass; _mecanicien_ and _conducteur_ were the commonest words in his
whole vocabulary. When possible he passed the time of day with both of
these important personages, or from the field he waved his hand and
took his cap off.
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