He waved his handkerchief frantically as
the train shot past, and he hardly knew which attracted him most--the
expression of happiness on Mr. Rogers's face, or the line of
nondescript humanity that gesticulated in the field as though they
wished to stop the Paris 'Rapide.'
For it was a _very_ human touch; and either Barnum's Circus or the
byeways and hedges of Fairyland had sent their picked representatives
with a dance seen usually only in shy moonlit glades. His master named
them as the carriage rattled by. The Paris Express, of course, did not
stop at little Bourcelles. Minks recognised each one easily from the
descriptions in the story.
The Widow Jequier, with garden skirts tucked high, and wearing big
gauntlet gloves, waved above her head a Union Jack that knocked her
bonnet sideways at every stroke, and even enveloped the black triangle
of a Trilby hat that her brother-in-law held motionless aloft as
though to test the wind for his daily report upon the condition of le
barometre. The Postmaster never waved. He looked steadily before him
at the passing train, his small, black figure more than usually
dwarfed by a stately outline that rose above the landscape by his
side, and was undoubtedly the Woman of the Haystack. Telling lines
from the story's rhymes flashed through Minks's memory as, chuckling
with pleasure, he watched the magnificent, ample gestures of Mother's
waving arms.
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