What a lark it is!  We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby.  Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be finished off by our Missis.  For some of the young ladies, when they’re new to the business, come into it mild!  Ah!  Our Missis, she soon takes that out of ’em.  Why, I originally come into the business meek myself.  But Our Missis, she soon took that out of me.

What a delightful lark it is!  I look upon us Refreshmenters as ockipying the only proudly independent footing on the Line.  There’s Papers, for instance,—­my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so,—­him as belongs to Smith’s bookstall.  Why, he no more dares to be up to our Refreshmenting games than he dares to jump a top of a locomotive with her steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at limited-mail speed.  Papers, he’d get his head punched at every compartment, first, second, and third, the whole length of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate my demeanour.  It’s the same with the porters, the same with the guards, the same with the ticket clerks, the same the whole way up to the secretary, traffic-manager, or very chairman.  There ain’t a one among ’em on the nobly independent footing we are.  Did you ever catch one of them, when you wanted anything of him, making a system of surveying the Line through a transparent medium composed of your head and body?  I should hope not.

You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction.  It’s led to by the door behind the counter, which you’ll notice usually stands ajar, and it’s the room where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines their hair.  You should see ’em at it, betwixt trains, Bandolining away, as if they was anointing themselves for the combat.  When you’re telegraphed, you should see their noses all a-going up with scorn, as if it was a part of the working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone electrical machinery.  You should hear Our Missis give the word, “Here comes the Beast to be Fed!” and then you should see ’em indignantly skipping across the Line, from the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale pastry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the glass covers, and get out the—­ha, ha, ha!—­the sherry,—­O my eye, my eye!—­for your Refreshment.

It’s only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, of course, I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, so ’olesome, so constitutional a check upon the public.  There was a Foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young ladies and Our Missis for “a leetel gloss host prarndee,” and having had the Line surveyed through him by all and no other acknowledgment, was a-proceeding at last to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own country, when Our Missis, with her hair almost a-coming un-Bandolined with rage, and her eyes omitting sparks, flew at him,