Odour of Chrysanthemums
by D. H. Lawrence
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THE small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumb-
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ling down from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared
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round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that
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it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indis-
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tinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A
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woman, walking up the railway-line to Underwood, drew back
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into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched the footplate
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of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past,
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one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood in-
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significantly trapped beneath the jolting black waggons and the
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hedge; then they curved away towards the coppice where the
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withered oak-leaves dropped noiselessly, while the birds, pulling
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at the scarlet hips beside the track, made off into the dusk that
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had already crept into the spinney. In the open, the smoke
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from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough grass. The
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fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip that led
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to the whimsey*, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned
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their run among the shaggy black alders, to roost in the tarred
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fowl-house. The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames
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like red sores licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon's stagnant
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light. Just beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the clumsy
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black headstocks of Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were
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spinning fast up against the sky, and the winding-engine rapped
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out its little spasms. The miners were being turned up.25
The engine whistled as it came near the rows of trucks that
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were standing in the bay of railway-lines by Brinsley pit.
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Already among the waggons the men were moving: those who
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were going up to Underwood stood aside to let the train jolt
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