Time Train - Chapter 3

It's been a week since the last installment, so without further ado, here is chapter 3 of "Time Train."
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“Florentine! Florentine! I have returned! I have returned from the past!”

Rhubarb raced through the streets like a madman, an exultant, giddy madman. Columbus yowled as well, happily knowing that he would in fact be eating his supper in a timely fashion.

Rhubarb burst through the front doors of his house like a flaming hog looking to dunk itself in the nearest unoccupied horse trough. There, across from the empty space where once sat the locomotive, was the ever accommodating Florentine, peacefully knitting a scarf that was perhaps more than twice too wide the length of what a scarf should have been. At the sight of his lovely wife, Rhubarb welled up with pride, lifting her up in his arms and spinning her around. And all through this Columbus released both hair and yips of joy while Florentine continued calmly completing her scarf.

“What grandiose achievement has found you today, Dear?”

“Oh, my darling wife, how have you been since I left? For it was minutes ago that I departed and several minutes thereafter that I skipped in order to reach you at this hour!”

Rhubarb danced around his wife, skipping to mimic his choice words.

“But, Dear, you have only been gone for maybe three quarters of an hour. That doesn’t seem nearly enough time for anything extraordinary to take place.”

“Do you not see? It is because I have bent time to my very will. For Columbus and I have accelerated through time such that, why, we are mere minutes younger than when we first activated the machine than we should be had I not activated the machine at all.”

At the moment Columbus heard his name, he elected not to acknowledge his part in the experiment, lest he should be volunteered again to act as fellow pioneer and co-pilot. His supper was enough welcomed adventure for him.

“Well, I never presume to know by what means or how you do what it is that you do, but I am proud of you nonetheless. And I am glad that you managed to accomplish all of this before the evening, Dear.”

The ecstatic Rhubarb planted a loving kiss on his young wife’s brow before striking a pose of success and achievement incomparable. And as Florentine had just finished her unusually fat scarf, she stood up and released an ever grateful Columbus from Rhubarb’s back sack.

“Now wash up, Dear, supper will be ready in an hour.”

But Rhubarb could not hear his kindhearted wife, for in his ears rang the voices of prospect and enterprise—for his next trip would be into the past.