“Quite impossible,” she said at last. “Next week is the busiest in our calendar. I shall inform you as to when and where she will accept her duties—good day!”

And with a harrumph of a most haughty nature, she was gone.

I rejoined Thursday5, who was waiting for me near two carriages that were being rebuilt, and then we made our way toward the engineer’s office. As we passed a moth-eaten horse, I heard it say to another shabby old nag, “So what’s this Pride and Prejudice all about, then?”

“It’s about a horse who pulls a carriage for the Bennets,” replied his friend, taking a mouthful from the feed bucket and munching thoughtfully.

“Please come in,” said the construction manager, and we entered the work hut. The interior was a neat and orderly drawing office with a half dozen octopi seated at draftsmen’s desks and dressed in tartan waistcoats that made them all look like oversize bagpipes—apart from one, who actually was an oversize set of bagpipes. They were all studying plans of the book, consulting damage reports and then sketching repair recommendations on eight different note pads simultaneously. The octopi blinked at us curiously as we walked in, except for one who was asleep and muttering something about his “garden being in the shade,” and another who was playing a doleful tune on a bouzouki.

“How odd,” said Thursday5.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Bruce usually plays the lute.”

In the center of the room was Isambard Kingdom Buñuel. He was standing in shirtsleeves over the blueprints of the book and was a man in healthy middle age who looked as if he had seen a lot of life and was much the better for it. His dark wool suit was spattered with mud, he wore a tall stovepipe hat, and moving constantly in his mouth was an unlit cigar. He was engaged in animated conversation with his three trusty engineering assistants. The first could best be described as a mad monk who was dressed in a coarse habit and had startling, divergent eyes. The second was a daringly sparkly drag queen who it seemed had just hopped off a carnival float in Rio, and the third was more ethereal—he was simply a disembodied voice known only as Horace. They were all discussing the pros and cons of balancing essential work with budgetary constraints, then about Loretta’s choice of sequins and the available restaurants for dinner.

“Thursday!” said Isambard as we walked in. “What a very fortuitous happenstance—I trust you are wellhealthy?”

“Wellhealthy indeedly,” I replied.