what is called The Refreshment
Room at Mugby Junction, and what's proudest boast is, that it never yet
refreshed a mortal being.

Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, in the
height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I've often counted 'em while they
brush the First-Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among
the glasses, bounded on the nor'west by the beer, stood pretty far to the
right of a metallic object that's at times the tea-urn and at times the
soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to its
contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by
a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly
exposed sideways to the glare of Our Missis's eye--you ask a Boy so
sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink;
you take particular notice that he'll try to seem not to hear you, that
he'll appear in a absent manner to survey the Line through a transparent
medium composed of your head and body, and that he won't serve you as
long as you can possibly bear it. That's me.

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 surv