All engines, moreover, were 'powerful locomotives.'
The phrase was stolen from his father--a magnificent sound it had,
taking several seconds to pronounce. No day was wholly lived in vain
which enabled him to turn to some one with, 'There's the Paris Rapide;
it's five minutes late'; or 'That's the Geneva omnibus. You see, it
has to have a very'--here a deep breath--'powerful locomotive.'
So upon this day of festival it was quite useless to talk of common
things, and even the holidays acquired a very remote importance.
Everybody in the village knew it. From Gygi, the solitary gendarme, to
Henri Beguin, who mended boots, but had the greater distinction that
he was the only man Gygi ever arrested, for periodical wild behaviour
--all knew that 'Cousin Henry, father's cousin, you know,' was
expected to arrive in the evening, that he was an important person in
the life of London, and that he was not exactly a _pasteur_, yet
shared something of a clergyman's grave splendour. Clothed in a
sacerdotal atmosphere he certainly was, though it was the gravity of
Jane Anne's negative description that fastened this wild
ecclesiastical idea upon him.
'He's not _exactly_ a clergyman,' she told the dressmaker, who for two
francs every Monday afternoon sat in the kitchen and helped with the
pile of indiscriminate mending,' because he has to do with rather big
companies and things.
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