The Railway Children by E. Nesbit.
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit.
To my dear son Paul Bland, behind whose knowledge
of railways my ignorance confidently shelters.
Chapter I. The beginning of things.
They were not railway children to begin with.
I don’t suppose they had ever thought about
railways except as a means of getting to Maskelyne
and Cook’s, the Pantomime, Zoological Gardens,
and Madame Tussaud’s. They were just ordinary
suburban children, and they lived with their
Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted
villa, with coloured glass in the front door,
a tiled passage that was called a hall, a
bath-room with hot and cold water, electric
bells, French windows, and a good deal of
white paint, and ‘every modern convenience’,
as the house-agents say.
There were three of them. Roberta was the
eldest. Of course, Mothers never have favourites,
but if their Mother HAD had a favourite, it
might have been Roberta. Next came Peter,
who wished to be an Engineer when he grew
up; and the youngest was Phyllis, who meant
extremely well.
Mother did not spend all her time in paying
dull calls to dull ladies, and sitting dully
at home waiting for dull ladies to pay calls
to her. She was almost always there, ready
to play with the children, and read to them,
and help them to do their home-lessons. Besides
this she used to write stories for them while
they were at school, and read them aloud after
tea, and she always made up funny pieces of
poetry for their birthdays and for other great
occasions, such as the christening of the
new kittens, or the refurnishing of the doll’s
house, or the time when they were getting
over the mumps.
These three lucky children always had everything
they needed: pretty clothes, good fires, a
lovely nursery with heaps of toys, and a Mother
Goose wall-paper. They had a kind and merry
nursemaid, and a dog who was called James,
and who was their very own. They also had
a Father who was just perfect—never cross,
never unjust, and always ready for a game—at
least, if at any time he was NOT ready, he
always had an excellent reason for it, and
explained the reason to the children so interestingly
and funnily that they felt sure he couldn’t
help himself.
You will think that they ought to have been
very happy. And so they were, but they did
not know HOW happy till the pretty life in
the Red Villa was over and done with, and
they had to live a very different life indeed.
The dreadful change came quite suddenly.
Peter had a birthday—his tenth. Among his
other presents was a model engine more perfect
than you could ever have dreamed of. The other
presents were full of charm, but the Engine
was fuller of charm than any of the others
were.
Its charm lasted in its full perfection for
exactly three days. Then, owing either to
Peter’s inexperience or Phyllis’s good
intentions, which had been rather pressing,
or to some other cause, the Engine suddenly
went off with a bang. James was so frightened
that he went out and did not come back all
day. All the Noah’s Ark people who were
in the tender were broken to bits, but nothing
else was hurt except the poor little engine
and the feelings of Peter. The others said
he cried over it—but of course boys of ten
do not cry, however terrible the tragedies
may be which darken their lot. He said that
his eyes were red because he had a cold. This
turned out to be true, though Peter did not
know it was when he said it, the next day
he had to go to bed and stay there. Mother
began to be afraid that he might be sickening
for measles, when suddenly he sat up in bed
and said:
“I hate gruel—I hate barley water—I
hate bread and milk. I want to get up and
have something REAL to eat.”
“What would you like?” Mother asked.
“A pigeon-pie,” said Peter, eagerly, “a
large pigeon-pie. A very large one.”
So Mother asked the Cook to make a large pigeon-pie.
The pie was made. And when the pie was made,
it was cooked. And when it was cooked, Peter
ate some of it. After that his cold was better.
Mother made a piece of poetry to amuse him
while the pie was being made. It began by
saying what an unfortunate but worthy boy
Peter was, then it went on:
He had an engine that he loved
With all his heart and soul,
And if he had a wish on earth
It was to keep it whole.
One day—my friends, prepare your minds;
I’m coming to the worst—
Quite suddenly a screw went mad,
And then the boiler burst!
With gloomy face he picked it up
And took it to his Mother,
Though even he could not suppose
That she could make another;
For those who perished on the line
He did not seem to care,
His engine being more to him
Than all the people there.
And now you see the reason why
Our Peter has been ill:
He soothes his soul with pigeon-pie
His gnawing grief to kill.
He wraps himself in blankets warm
And sleeps in bed till late,
Determined thus to overcome
His miserable fate.
And if his eyes are rather red,
His cold must just excuse it:
Offer him pie; you may be sure
He never will refuse it.
Father had been away in the country for three
or four days. All Peter’s hopes for the
curing of his afflicted Engine were now fixed
on his Father, for Father was most wonderfully
clever with his fingers. He could mend all
sorts of things. He had often acted as veterinary
surgeon to the wooden rocking-horse; once
he had saved its life when all human aid was
despaired of, and the poor creature was given
up for lost, and even the carpenter said he
didn’t see his way to do anything. And it
was Father who mended the doll’s cradle
when no one else could; and with a little
glue and some bits of wood and a pen-knife
made all the Noah’s Ark beasts as strong
on their pins as ever they were, if not stronger.
Peter, with heroic unselfishness, did not
say anything about his Engine till after Father
had had his dinner and his after-dinner cigar.
The unselfishness was Mother’s idea—but
it was Peter who carried it out. And needed
a good deal of patience, too.
At last Mother said to Father, “Now, dear,
if you’re quite rested, and quite comfy,
we want to tell you about the great railway
accident, and ask your advice.”
“All right,” said Father, “fire away!”
So then Peter told the sad tale, and fetched
what was left of the Engine.
“Hum,” said Father, when he had looked
the Engine over very carefully.
The children held their breaths.
“Is there NO hope?” said Peter, in a low,
unsteady voice.
“Hope? Rather! Tons of it,” said Father,
cheerfully; “but it’ll want something
besides hope—a bit of brazing say, or some
solder, and a new valve. I think we’d better
keep it for a rainy day. In other words, I’ll
give up Saturday afternoon to it, and you
shall all help me.”
“CAN girls help to mend engines?” Peter
asked doubtfully.
“Of course they can. Girls are just as clever
as boys, and don’t you forget it! How would
you like to be an engine-driver, Phil?”
“My face would be always dirty, wouldn’t
it?” said Phyllis, in unenthusiastic tones,
“and I expect I should break something.”
“I should just love it,” said Roberta—“do
you think I could when I’m grown up, Daddy?
Or even a stoker?”
“You mean a fireman,” said Daddy, pulling
and twisting at the engine. “Well, if you
still wish it, when you’re grown up, we’ll
see about making you a fire-woman. I remember
when I was a boy—”
Just then there was a knock at the front door.
“Who on earth!” said Father. “An Englishman’s
house is his castle, of course, but I do wish
they built semi-detached villas with moats
and drawbridges.”
Ruth—she was the parlour-maid and had red
hair—came in and said that two gentlemen
wanted to see the master.
“I’ve shown them into the Library, Sir,”
said she.
“I expect it’s the subscription to the
Vicar’s testimonial,” said Mother, “or
else it’s the choir holiday fund. Get rid
of them quickly, dear. It does break up an
evening so, and it’s nearly the children’s
bedtime.”
But Father did not seem to be able to get
rid of the gentlemen at all quickly.
“I wish we HAD got a moat and drawbridge,”
said Roberta; “then, when we didn’t want
people, we could just pull up the drawbridge
and no one else could get in. I expect Father
will have forgotten about when he was a boy
if they stay much longer.”
Mother tried to make the time pass by telling
them a new fairy story about a Princess with
green eyes, but it was difficult because they
could hear the voices of Father and the gentlemen
in the Library, and Father’s voice sounded
louder and different to the voice he generally
used to people who came about testimonials
and holiday funds.
Then the Library bell rang, and everyone heaved
a breath of relief.
“They’re going now,” said Phyllis; “he’s
rung to have them shown out.”
But instead of showing anybody out, Ruth showed
herself in, and she looked queer, the children
thought.
“Please’m,” she said, “the Master
wants you to just step into the study. He
looks like the dead, mum; I think he’s had
bad news. You’d best prepare yourself for
the worst, ‘m—p’raps it’s a death
in the family or a bank busted or—”
“That’ll do, Ruth,” said Mother gently;
“you can go.”
Then Mother went into the Library. There was
more talking. Then the bell rang again, and
Ruth fetched a cab. The children heard boots
go out and down the steps. The cab drove away,
and the front door shut. Then Mother came
in. Her dear face was as white as her lace
collar, and her eyes looked very big and shining.
Her mouth looked like just a line of pale
red—her lips were thin and not their proper
shape at all.
“It’s bedtime,” she said. “Ruth will
put you to bed.”
“But you promised we should sit up late
tonight because Father’s come home,” said
Phyllis.
“Father’s been called away—on business,”
said Mother. “Come, darlings, go at once.”
They kissed her and went. Roberta lingered
to give Mother an extra hug and to whisper:
“It wasn’t bad news, Mammy, was it? Is
anyone dead—or—”
“Nobody’s dead—no,” said Mother, and
she almost seemed to push Roberta away. “I
can’t tell you anything tonight, my pet.
Go, dear, go NOW.”
So Roberta went.
Ruth brushed the girls’ hair and helped
them to undress. (Mother almost always did
this herself.) When she had turned down the
gas and left them she found Peter, still dressed,
waiting on the stairs.
“I say, Ruth, what’s up?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me no questions and I won’t
tell you no lies,” the red-headed Ruth replied.
“You’ll know soon enough.”
Late that night Mother came up and kissed
all three children as they lay asleep. But
Roberta was the only one whom the kiss woke,
and she lay mousey-still, and said nothing.
“If Mother doesn’t want us to know she’s
been crying,” she said to herself as she
heard through the dark the catching of her
Mother’s breath, “we WON’T know it.
That’s all.”
When they came down to breakfast the next
morning, Mother had already gone out.
“To London,” Ruth said, and left them
to their breakfast.
“There’s something awful the matter,”
said Peter, breaking his egg. “Ruth told
me last night we should know soon enough.”
“Did you ASK her?” said Roberta, with
scorn.
“Yes, I did!” said Peter, angrily. “If
you could go to bed without caring whether
Mother was worried or not, I couldn’t. So
there.”
“I don’t think we ought to ask the servants
things Mother doesn’t tell us,” said Roberta.
“That’s right, Miss Goody-goody,” said
Peter, “preach away.”
“I’M not goody,” said Phyllis, “but
I think Bobbie’s right this time.”
“Of course. She always is. In her own opinion,”
said Peter.
“Oh, DON’T!” cried Roberta, putting
down her egg-spoon; “don’t let’s be
horrid to each other. I’m sure some dire
calamity is happening. Don’t let’s make
it worse!”
“Who began, I should like to know?” said
Peter.
Roberta made an effort, and answered:—
“I did, I suppose, but—”
“Well, then,” said Peter, triumphantly.
But before he went to school he thumped his
sister between the shoulders and told her
to cheer up.
The children came home to one o’clock dinner,
but Mother was not there. And she was not
there at tea-time.
It was nearly seven before she came in, looking
so ill and tired that the children felt they
could not ask her any questions. She sank
into an arm-chair. Phyllis took the long pins
out of her hat, while Roberta took off her
gloves, and Peter unfastened her walking-shoes
and fetched her soft velvety slippers for
her.
When she had had a cup of tea, and Roberta
had put eau-de-Cologne on her poor head that
ached, Mother said:—
“Now, my darlings, I want to tell you something.
Those men last night did bring very bad news,
and Father will be away for some time. I am
very worried about it, and I want you all
to help me, and not to make things harder
for me.”
“As if we would!” said Roberta, holding
Mother’s hand against her face.
“You can help me very much,” said Mother,
“by being good and happy and not quarrelling
when I’m away”—Roberta and Peter exchanged
guilty glances—“for I shall have to be
away a good deal.”
“We won’t quarrel. Indeed we won’t,”
said everybody. And meant it, too.
“Then,” Mother went on, “I want you
not to ask me any questions about this trouble;
and not to ask anybody else any questions.”
Peter cringed and shuffled his boots on the
carpet.
“You’ll promise this, too, won’t you?”
said Mother.
“I did ask Ruth,” said Peter, suddenly.
“I’m very sorry, but I did.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said I should know soon enough.”
“It isn’t necessary for you to know anything
about it,” said Mother; “it’s about
business, and you never do understand business,
do you?”
“No,” said Roberta; “is it something
to do with Government?” For Father was in
a Government Office.
“Yes,” said Mother. “Now it’s bed-time,
my darlings. And don’t YOU worry. It’ll
all come right in the end.”
“Then don’t YOU worry either, Mother,”
said Phyllis, “and we’ll all be as good
as gold.”
Mother sighed and kissed them.
“We’ll begin being good the first thing
tomorrow morning,” said Peter, as they went
upstairs.
“Why not NOW?” said Roberta.
“There’s nothing to be good ABOUT now,
silly,” said Peter.
“We might begin to try to FEEL good,”
said Phyllis, “and not call names.”
“Who’s calling names?” said Peter. “Bobbie
knows right enough that when I say ‘silly’,
it’s just the same as if I said Bobbie.”
“WELL,” said Roberta.
“No, I don’t mean what you mean. I mean
it’s just a—what is it Father calls it?—a
germ of endearment! Good night.”
The girls folded up their clothes with more
than usual neatness—which was the only way
of being good that they could think of.
“I say,” said Phyllis, smoothing out her
pinafore, “you used to say it was so dull—nothing
happening, like in books. Now something HAS
happened.”
“I never wanted things to happen to make
Mother unhappy,” said Roberta. “Everything’s
perfectly horrid.”
Everything continued to be perfectly horrid
for some weeks.
Mother was nearly always out. Meals were dull
and dirty. The between-maid was sent away,
and Aunt Emma came on a visit. Aunt Emma was
much older than Mother. She was going abroad
to be a governess. She was very busy getting
her clothes ready, and they were very ugly,
dingy clothes, and she had them always littering
about, and the sewing-machine seemed to whir—on
and on all day and most of the night. Aunt
Emma believed in keeping children in their
proper places. And they more than returned
the compliment. Their idea of Aunt Emma’s
proper place was anywhere where they were
not. So they saw very little of her. They
preferred the company of the servants, who
were more amusing. Cook, if in a good temper,
could sing comic songs, and the housemaid,
if she happened not to be offended with you,
could imitate a hen that has laid an egg,
a bottle of champagne being opened, and could
mew like two cats fighting. The servants never
told the children what the bad news was that
the gentlemen had brought to Father. But they
kept hinting that they could tell a great
deal if they chose—and this was not comfortable.
One day when Peter had made a booby trap over
the bath-room door, and it had acted beautifully
as Ruth passed through, that red-haired parlour-maid
caught him and boxed his ears.
“You’ll come to a bad end,” she said
furiously, “you nasty little limb, you!
If you don’t mend your ways, you’ll go
where your precious Father’s gone, so I
tell you straight!”
Roberta repeated this to her Mother, and next
day Ruth was sent away.
Then came the time when Mother came home and
went to bed and stayed there two days and
the Doctor came, and the children crept wretchedly
about the house and wondered if the world
was coming to an end.
Mother came down one morning to breakfast,
very pale and with lines on her face that
used not to be there. And she smiled, as well
as she could, and said:—
“Now, my pets, everything is settled. We’re
going to leave this house, and go and live
in the country. Such a ducky dear little white
house. I know you’ll love it.”
A whirling week of packing followed—not
just packing clothes, like when you go to
the seaside, but packing chairs and tables,
covering their tops with sacking and their
legs with straw.
All sorts of things were packed that you don’t
pack when you go to the seaside. Crockery,
blankets, candlesticks, carpets, bedsteads,
saucepans, and even fenders and fire-irons.
The house was like a furniture warehouse.
I think the children enjoyed it very much.
Mother was very busy, but not too busy now
to talk to them, and read to them, and even
to make a bit of poetry for Phyllis to cheer
her up when she fell down with a screwdriver
and ran it into her hand.
“Aren’t you going to pack this, Mother?”
Roberta asked, pointing to the beautiful cabinet
inlaid with red turtleshell and brass.
“We can’t take everything,” said Mother.
“But we seem to be taking all the ugly things,”
said Roberta.
“We’re taking the useful ones,” said
Mother; “we’ve got to play at being Poor
for a bit, my chickabiddy.”
When all the ugly useful things had been packed
up and taken away in a van by men in green-baize
aprons, the two girls and Mother and Aunt
Emma slept in the two spare rooms where the
furniture was all pretty. All their beds had
gone. A bed was made up for Peter on the drawing-room
sofa.
“I say, this is larks,” he said, wriggling
joyously, as Mother tucked him up. “I do
like moving! I wish we moved once a month.”
Mother laughed.
“I don’t!” she said. “Good night,
Peterkin.”
As she turned away Roberta saw her face. She
never forgot it.
“Oh, Mother,” she whispered all to herself
as she got into bed, “how brave you are!
How I love you! Fancy being brave enough to
laugh when you’re feeling like THAT!”
Next day boxes were filled, and boxes and
more boxes; and then late in the afternoon
a cab came to take them to the station.
Aunt Emma saw them off. They felt that THEY
were seeing HER off, and they were glad of
it.
“But, oh, those poor little foreign children
that she’s going to governess!” whispered
Phyllis. “I wouldn’t be them for anything!”
At first they enjoyed looking out of the window,
but when it grew dusk they grew sleepier and
sleepier, and no one knew how long they had
been in the train when they were roused by
Mother’s shaking them gently and saying:—
“Wake up, dears. We’re there.”
They woke up, cold and melancholy, and stood
shivering on the draughty platform while the
baggage was taken out of the train. Then the
engine, puffing and blowing, set to work again,
and dragged the train away. The children watched
the tail-lights of the guard’s van disappear
into the darkness.
This was the first train the children saw
on that railway which was in time to become
so very dear to them. They did not guess then
how they would grow to love the railway, and
how soon it would become the centre of their
new life, nor what wonders and changes it
would bring to them. They only shivered and
sneezed and hoped the walk to the new house
would not be long. Peter’s nose was colder
than he ever remembered it to have been before.
Roberta’s hat was crooked, and the elastic
seemed tighter than usual. Phyllis’s shoe-laces
had come undone.
“Come,” said Mother, “we’ve got to
walk. There aren’t any cabs here.”
The walk was dark and muddy. The children
stumbled a little on the rough road, and once
Phyllis absently fell into a puddle, and was
picked up damp and unhappy. There were no
gas-lamps on the road, and the road was uphill.
The cart went at a foot’s pace, and they
followed the gritty crunch of its wheels.
As their eyes got used to the darkness, they
could see the mound of boxes swaying dimly
in front of them.
A long gate had to be opened for the cart
to pass through, and after that the road seemed
to go across fields—and now it went down
hill. Presently a great dark lumpish thing
showed over to the right.
“There’s the house,” said Mother. “I
wonder why she’s shut the shutters.”
“Who’s SHE?” asked Roberta.
“The woman I engaged to clean the place,
and put the furniture straight and get supper.”
There was a low wall, and trees inside.
“That’s the garden,” said Mother.
“It looks more like a dripping-pan full
of black cabbages,” said Peter.
The cart went on along by the garden wall,
and round to the back of the house, and here
it clattered into a cobble-stoned yard and
stopped at the back door.
There was no light in any of the windows.
Everyone hammered at the door, but no one
came.
The man who drove the cart said he expected
Mrs. Viney had gone home.
“You see your train was that late,” said
he.
“But she’s got the key,” said Mother.
“What are we to do?”
“Oh, she’ll have left that under the doorstep,”
said the cart man; “folks do hereabouts.”
He took the lantern off his cart and stooped.
“Ay, here it is, right enough,” he said.
He unlocked the door and went in and set his
lantern on the table.
“Got e’er a candle?” said he.
“I don’t know where anything is.” Mother
spoke rather less cheerfully than usual.
He struck a match. There was a candle on the
table, and he lighted it. By its thin little
glimmer the children saw a large bare kitchen
with a stone floor. There were no curtains,
no hearth-rug. The kitchen table from home
stood in the middle of the room. The chairs
were in one corner, and the pots, pans, brooms,
and crockery in another. There was no fire,
and the black grate showed cold, dead ashes.
As the cart man turned to go out after he
had brought in the boxes, there was a rustling,
scampering sound that seemed to come from
inside the walls of the house.
“Oh, what’s that?” cried the girls.
“It’s only the rats,” said the cart
man. And he went away and shut the door, and
the sudden draught of
it blew out the candle.
“Oh, dear,” said Phyllis, “I wish we
hadn’t come!” and she knocked a chair
over.
“ONLY the rats!” said Peter, in the dark.
Chapter II. Peter’s coal-mine.
“What fun!” said Mother, in the dark,
feeling for the matches on the table. “How
frightened the poor mice were—I don’t
believe they were rats at all.”
She struck a match and relighted the candle
and everyone looked at each other by its winky,
blinky light.
“Well,” she said, “you’ve often wanted
something to happen and now it has. This is
quite an adventure, isn’t it? I told Mrs.
Viney to get us some bread and butter, and
meat and things, and to have supper ready.
I suppose she’s laid it in the dining-room.
So let’s go and see.”
The dining-room opened out of the kitchen.
It looked much darker than the kitchen when
they went in with the one candle. Because
the kitchen was whitewashed, but the dining-room
was dark wood from floor to ceiling, and across
the ceiling there were heavy black beams.
There was a muddled maze of dusty furniture—the
breakfast-room furniture from the old home
where they had lived all their lives. It seemed
a very long time ago, and a very long way
off.
There was the table certainly, and there were
chairs, but there was no supper.
“Let’s look in the other rooms,” said
Mother; and they looked. And in each room
was the same kind of blundering half-arrangement
of furniture, and fire-irons and crockery,
and all sorts of odd things on the floor,
but there was nothing to eat; even in the
pantry there were only a rusty cake-tin and
a broken plate with whitening mixed in it.
“What a horrid old woman!” said Mother;
“she’s just walked off with the money
and not got us anything to eat at all.”
“Then shan’t we have any supper at all?”
asked Phyllis, dismayed, stepping back on
to a soap-dish that cracked responsively.
“Oh, yes,” said Mother, “only it’ll
mean unpacking one of those big cases that
we put in the cellar. Phil, do mind where
you’re walking to, there’s a dear. Peter,
hold the light.”
The cellar door opened out of the kitchen.
There were five wooden steps leading down.
It wasn’t a proper cellar at all, the children
thought, because its ceiling went up as high
as the kitchen’s. A bacon-rack hung under
its ceiling. There was wood in it, and coal.
Also the big cases.
Peter held the candle, all on one side, while
Mother tried to open the great packing-case.
It was very securely nailed down.
“Where’s the hammer?” asked Peter.
“That’s just it,” said Mother. “I’m
afraid it’s inside the box. But there’s
a coal-shovel—and there’s the kitchen
poker.”
And with these she tried to get the case open.
“Let me do it,” said Peter, thinking he
could do it better himself. Everyone thinks
this when he sees another person stirring
a fire, or opening a box, or untying a knot
in a bit of string.
“You’ll hurt your hands, Mammy,” said
Roberta; “let me.”
“I wish Father was here,” said Phyllis;
“he’d get it open in two shakes. What
are you kicking me for, Bobbie?”
“I wasn’t,” said Roberta.
Just then the first of the long nails in the
packing-case began to come out with a scrunch.
Then a lath was raised and then another, till
all four stood up with the long nails in them
shining fiercely like iron teeth in the candle-light.
“Hooray!” said Mother; “here are some
candles—the very first thing! You girls
go and light them. You’ll find some saucers
and things. Just drop a little candle-grease
in the saucer and stick the candle upright
in it.”
“How many shall we light?”
“As many as ever you like,” said Mother,
gaily. “The great thing is to be cheerful.
Nobody can be cheerful in the dark except
owls and dormice.”
So the girls lighted candles. The head of
the first match flew off and stuck to Phyllis’s
finger; but, as Roberta said, it was only
a little burn, and she might have had to be
a Roman martyr and be burned whole if she
had happened to live in the days when those
things were fashionable.
Then, when the dining-room was lighted by
fourteen candles, Roberta fetched coal and
wood and lighted a fire.
“It’s very cold for May,” she said,
feeling what a grown-up thing it was to say.
The fire-light and the candle-light made the
dining-room look very different, for now you
could see that the dark walls were of wood,
carved here and there into little wreaths
and loops.
The girls hastily ‘tidied’ the room, which
meant putting the chairs against the wall,
and piling all the odds and ends into a corner
and partly hiding them with the big leather
arm-chair that Father used to sit in after
dinner.
“Bravo!” cried Mother, coming in with
a tray full of things. “This is something
like! I’ll just get a tablecloth and then—”
The tablecloth was in a box with a proper
lock that was opened with a key and not with
a shovel, and when the cloth was spread on
the table, a real feast was laid out on it.
Everyone was very, very tired, but everyone
cheered up at the sight of the funny and delightful
supper. There were biscuits, the Marie and
the plain kind, sardines, preserved ginger,
cooking raisins, and candied peel and marmalade.
“What a good thing Aunt Emma packed up all
the odds and ends out of the Store cupboard,”
said Mother. “Now, Phil, DON’T put the
marmalade spoon in among the sardines.”
“No, I won’t, Mother,” said Phyllis,
and put it down among the Marie biscuits.
“Let’s drink Aunt Emma’s health,”
said Roberta, suddenly; “what should we
have done if she hadn’t packed up these
things? Here’s to Aunt Emma!”
And the toast was drunk in ginger wine and
water, out of willow-patterned tea-cups, because
the glasses couldn’t be found.
They all felt that they had been a little
hard on Aunt Emma. She wasn’t a nice cuddly
person like Mother, but after all it was she
who had thought of packing up the odds and
ends of things to eat.
It was Aunt Emma, too, who had aired all the
sheets ready; and the men who had moved the
furniture had put the bedsteads together,
so the beds were soon made.
“Good night, chickies,” said Mother. “I’m
sure there aren’t any rats. But I’ll leave
my door open, and then if a mouse comes, you
need only scream, and I’ll come and tell
it exactly what I think of it.”
Then she went to her own room. Roberta woke
to hear the little travelling clock chime
two. It sounded like a church clock ever so
far away, she always thought. And she heard,
too, Mother still moving about in her room.
Next morning Roberta woke Phyllis by pulling
her hair gently, but quite enough for her
purpose.
“Wassermarrer?” asked Phyllis, still almost
wholly asleep.
“Wake up! wake up!” said Roberta. “We’re
in the new house—don’t you remember? No
servants or anything. Let’s get up and begin
to be useful. We’ll just creep down mouse-quietly,
and have everything beautiful before Mother
gets up. I’ve woke Peter. He’ll be dressed
as soon as we are.”
So they dressed quietly and quickly. Of course,
there was no water in their room, so when
they got down they washed as much as they
thought was necessary under the spout of the
pump in the yard. One pumped and the other
washed. It was splashy but interesting.
“It’s much more fun than basin washing,”
said Roberta. “How sparkly the weeds are
between the stones, and the moss on the roof—oh,
and the flowers!”
The roof of the back kitchen sloped down quite
low. It was made of thatch and it had moss
on it, and house-leeks and stonecrop and wallflowers,
and even a clump of purple flag-flowers, at
the far corner.
“This is far, far, far and away prettier
than Edgecombe Villa,” said Phyllis. “I
wonder what the garden’s like.”
“We mustn’t think of the garden yet,”
said Roberta, with earnest energy. “Let’s
go in and begin to work.”
They lighted the fire and put the kettle on,
and they arranged the crockery for breakfast;
they could not find all the right things,
but a glass ash-tray made an excellent salt-cellar,
and a newish baking-tin seemed as if it would
do to put bread on, if they had any.
When there seemed to be nothing more that
they could do, they went out again into the
fresh bright morning.
“We’ll go into the garden now,” said
Peter. But somehow they couldn’t find the
garden. They went round the house and round
the house. The yard occupied the back, and
across it were stables and outbuildings. On
the other three sides the house stood simply
in a field, without a yard of garden to divide
it from the short smooth turf. And yet they
had certainly seen the garden wall the night
before.
It was a hilly country. Down below they could
see the line of the railway, and the black
yawning mouth of a tunnel. The station was
out of sight. There was a great bridge with
tall arches running across one end of the
valley.
“Never mind the garden,” said Peter; “let’s
go down and look at the railway. There might
be trains passing.”
“We can see them from here,” said Roberta,
slowly; “let’s sit down a bit.”
So they all sat down on a great flat grey
stone that had pushed itself up out of the
grass; it was one of many that lay about on
the hillside, and when Mother came out to
look for them at eight o’clock, she found
them deeply asleep in a contented, sun-warmed
bunch.
They had made an excellent fire, and had set
the kettle on it at about half-past five.
So that by eight the fire had been out for
some time, the water had all boiled away,
and the bottom was burned out of the kettle.
Also they had not thought of washing the crockery
before they set the table.
“But it doesn’t matter—the cups and
saucers, I mean,” said Mother. “Because
I’ve found another room—I’d quite forgotten
there was one. And it’s magic! And I’ve
boiled the water for tea in a saucepan.”
The forgotten room opened out of the kitchen.
In the agitation and half darkness the night
before its door had been mistaken for a cupboard’s.
It was a little square room, and on its table,
all nicely set out, was a joint of cold roast
beef, with bread, butter, cheese, and a pie.
“Pie for breakfast!” cried Peter; “how
perfectly ripping!”
“It isn’t pigeon-pie,” said Mother;
“it’s only apple. Well, this is the supper
we ought to have had last night. And there
was a note from Mrs. Viney. Her son-in-law
has broken his arm, and she had to get home
early. She’s coming this morning at ten.”
That was a wonderful breakfast. It is unusual
to begin the day with cold apple pie, but
the children all said they would rather have
it than meat.
“You see it’s more like dinner than breakfast
to us,” said Peter, passing his plate for
more, “because we were up so early.”
The day passed in helping Mother to unpack
and arrange things. Six small legs quite ached
with running about while their owners carried
clothes and crockery and all sorts of things
to their proper places. It was not till quite
late in the afternoon that Mother said:—
“There! That’ll do for to-day. I’ll
lie down for an hour, so as to be as fresh
as a lark by supper-time.”
Then they all looked at each other. Each of
the three expressive countenances expressed
the same thought. That thought was double,
and consisted, like the bits of information
in the Child’s Guide to Knowledge, of a
question and an answer.
Q. Where shall we go?
A. To the railway.
So to the railway they went, and as soon as
they started for the railway they saw where
the garden had hidden itself. It was right
behind the stables, and it had a high wall
all round.
“Oh, never mind about the garden now!”
cried Peter. “Mother told me this morning
where it was. It’ll keep till to-morrow.
Let’s get to the railway.”
The way to the railway was all down hill over
smooth, short turf with here and there furze
bushes and grey and yellow rocks sticking
out like candied peel from the top of a cake.
The way ended in a steep run and a wooden
fence—and there was the railway with the
shining metals and the telegraph wires and
posts and signals.
They all climbed on to the top of the fence,
and then suddenly there was a rumbling sound
that made them look along the line to the
right, where the dark mouth of a tunnel opened
itself in the face of a rocky cliff; next
moment a train had rushed out of the tunnel
with a shriek and a snort, and had slid noisily
past them. They felt the rush of its passing,
and the pebbles on the line jumped and rattled
under it as it went by.
“Oh!” said Roberta, drawing a long breath;
“it was like a great dragon tearing by.
Did you feel it fan us with its hot wings?”
“I suppose a dragon’s lair might look
very like that tunnel from the outside,”
said Phyllis.
But Peter said:—
“I never thought we should ever get as near
to a train as this. It’s the most ripping
sport!”
“Better than toy-engines, isn’t it?”
said Roberta.
(I am tired of calling Roberta by her name.
I don’t see why I should. No one else did.
Everyone else called her Bobbie, and I don’t
see why I shouldn’t.)
“I don’t know; it’s different,” said
Peter. “It seems so odd to see ALL of a
train. It’s awfully tall, isn’t it?”
“We’ve always seen them cut in half by
platforms,” said Phyllis.
“I wonder if that train was going to London,”
Bobbie said. “London’s where Father is.”
“Let’s go down to the station and find
out,” said Peter.
So they went.
They walked along the edge of the line, and
heard the telegraph wires humming over their
heads. When you are in the train, it seems
such a little way between post and post, and
one after another the posts seem to catch
up the wires almost more quickly than you
can count them. But when you have to walk,
the posts seem few and far between.
But the children got to the station at last.
Never before had any of them been at a station,
except for the purpose of catching trains—or
perhaps waiting for them—and always with
grown-ups in attendance, grown-ups who were
not themselves interested in stations, except
as places from which they wished to get away.
Never before had they passed close enough
to a signal-box to be able to notice the wires,
and to hear the mysterious ‘ping, ping,’
followed by the strong, firm clicking of machinery.
The very sleepers on which the rails lay were
a delightful path to travel by—just far
enough apart to serve as the stepping-stones
in a game of foaming torrents hastily organised
by Bobbie.
Then to arrive at the station, not through
the booking office, but in a freebooting sort
of way by the sloping end of the platform.
This in itself was joy.
Joy, too, it was to peep into the porters’
room, where the lamps are, and the Railway
almanac on the wall, and one porter half asleep
behind a paper.
There were a great many crossing lines at
the station; some of them just ran into a
yard and stopped short, as though they were
tired of business and meant to retire for
good. Trucks stood on the rails here, and
on one side was a great heap of coal—not
a loose heap, such as you see in your coal
cellar, but a sort of solid building of coals
with large square blocks of coal outside used
just as though they were bricks, and built
up till the heap looked like the picture of
the Cities of the Plain in ‘Bible Stories
for Infants.’ There was a line of whitewash
near the top of the coaly wall.
When presently the Porter lounged out of his
room at the twice-repeated tingling thrill
of a gong over the station door, Peter said,
“How do you do?” in his best manner, and
hastened to ask what the white mark was on
the coal for.
“To mark how much coal there be,” said
the Porter, “so as we’ll know if anyone
nicks it. So don’t you go off with none
in your pockets, young gentleman!”
This seemed, at the time but a merry jest,
and Peter felt at once that the Porter was
a friendly sort with no nonsense about him.
But later the words came back to Peter with
a new meaning.
Have you ever gone into a farmhouse kitchen
on a baking day, and seen the great crock
of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have,
and if you were at that time still young enough
to be interested in everything you saw, you
will remember that you found yourself quite
unable to resist the temptation to poke your
finger into the soft round of dough that curved
inside the pan like a giant mushroom. And
you will remember that your finger made a
dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite
surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough
looked quite the same as it did before you
touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was
extra dirty, in which case, naturally, there
would be a little black mark.
Well, it was just like that with the sorrow
the children had felt at Father’s going
away, and at Mother’s being so unhappy.
It made a deep impression, but the impression
did not last long.
They soon got used to being without Father,
though they did not forget him; and they got
used to not going to school, and to seeing
very little of Mother, who was now almost
all day shut up in her upstairs room writing,
writing, writing. She used to come down at
tea-time and read aloud the stories she had
written. They were lovely stories.
The rocks and hills and valleys and trees,
the canal, and above all, the railway, were
so new and so perfectly pleasing that the
remembrance of the old life in the villa grew
to seem almost like a dream.
Mother had told them more than once that they
were ‘quite poor now,’ but this did not
seem to be anything but a way of speaking.
Grown-up people, even Mothers, often make
remarks that don’t seem to mean anything
in particular, just for the sake of saying
something, seemingly. There was always enough
to eat, and they wore the same kind of nice
clothes they had always worn.
But in June came three wet days; the rain
came down, straight as lances, and it was
very, very cold. Nobody could go out, and
everybody shivered. They all went up to the
door of Mother’s room and knocked.
“Well, what is it?” asked Mother from
inside.
“Mother,” said Bobbie, “mayn’t I light
a fire? I do know how.”
And Mother said: “No, my ducky-love. We
mustn’t have fires in June—coal is so
dear. If you’re cold, go and have a good
romp in the attic. That’ll warm you.”
“But, Mother, it only takes such a very
little coal to make a fire.”
“It’s more than we can afford, chickeny-love,”
said Mother, cheerfully. “Now run away,
there’s darlings—I’m madly busy!”
“Mother’s always busy now,” said Phyllis,
in a whisper to Peter. Peter did not answer.
He shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking.
Thought, however, could not long keep itself
from the suitable furnishing of a bandit’s
lair in the attic. Peter was the bandit, of
course. Bobbie was his lieutenant, his band
of trusty robbers, and, in due course, the
parent of Phyllis, who was the captured maiden
for whom a magnificent ransom—in horse-beans—was
unhesitatingly paid.
They all went down to tea flushed and joyous
as any mountain brigands.
But when Phyllis was going to add jam to her
bread and butter, Mother said:—
“Jam OR butter, dear—not jam AND butter.
We can’t afford that sort of reckless luxury
nowadays.”
Phyllis finished the slice of bread and butter
in silence, and followed it up by bread and
jam. Peter mingled thought and weak tea.
After tea they went back to the attic and
he said to his sisters:—
“I have an idea.”
“What’s that?” they asked politely.
“I shan’t tell you,” was Peter’s unexpected
rejoinder.
“Oh, very well,” said Bobbie; and Phil
said, “Don’t, then.”
“Girls,” said Peter, “are always so
hasty tempered.”
“I should like to know what boys are?”
said Bobbie, with fine disdain. “I don’t
want to know about your silly ideas.”
“You’ll know some day,” said Peter,
keeping his own temper by what looked exactly
like a miracle; “if you hadn’t been so
keen on a row, I might have told you about
it being only noble-heartedness that made
me not tell you my idea. But now I shan’t
tell you anything at all about it—so there!”
And it was, indeed, some time before he could
be induced to say anything, and when he did
it wasn’t much. He said:—
“The only reason why I won’t tell you
my idea that I’m going to do is because
it MAY be wrong, and I don’t want to drag
you into it.”
“Don’t you do it if it’s wrong, Peter,”
said Bobbie; “let me do it.” But Phyllis
said:—
“I should like to do wrong if YOU’RE going
to!”
“No,” said Peter, rather touched by this
devotion; “it’s a forlorn hope, and I’m
going to lead it. All I ask is that if Mother
asks where I am, you won’t blab.”
“We haven’t got anything TO blab,” said
Bobbie, indignantly.
“Oh, yes, you have!” said Peter, dropping
horse-beans through his fingers. “I’ve
trusted you to the death. You know I’m going
to do a lone adventure—and some people might
think it wrong—I don’t. And if Mother
asks where I am, say I’m playing at mines.”
“What sort of mines?”
“You just say mines.”
“You might tell US, Pete.”
“Well, then, COAL-mines. But don’t you
let the word pass your lips on pain of torture.”
“You needn’t threaten,” said Bobbie,
“and I do think you might let us help.”
“If I find a coal-mine, you shall help cart
the coal,” Peter condescended to promise.
“Keep your secret if you like,” said Phyllis.
“Keep it if you CAN,” said Bobbie.
“I’ll keep it, right enough,” said Peter.
Between tea and supper there is an interval
even in the most greedily regulated families.
At this time Mother was usually writing, and
Mrs. Viney had gone home.
Two nights after the dawning of Peter’s
idea he beckoned the girls mysteriously at
the twilight hour.
“Come hither with me,” he said, “and
bring the Roman Chariot.”
The Roman Chariot was a very old perambulator
that had spent years of retirement in the
loft over the coach-house. The children had
oiled its works till it glided noiseless as
a pneumatic bicycle, and answered to the helm
as it had probably done in its best days.
“Follow your dauntless leader,” said Peter,
and led the way down the hill towards the
station.
Just above the station many rocks have pushed
their heads out through the turf as though
they, like the children, were interested in
the railway.
In a little hollow between three rocks lay
a heap of dried brambles and heather.
Peter halted, turned over the brushwood with
a well-scarred boot, and said:—
“Here’s the first coal from the St. Peter’s
Mine. We’ll take it home in the chariot.
Punctuality and despatch. All orders carefully
attended to. Any shaped lump cut to suit regular
customers.”
The chariot was packed full of coal. And when
it was packed it had to be unpacked again
because it was so heavy that it couldn’t
be got up the hill by the three children,
not even when Peter harnessed himself to the
handle with his braces, and firmly grasping
his waistband in one hand pulled while the
girls pushed behind.
Three journeys had to be made before the coal
from Peter’s mine was added to the heap
of Mother’s coal in the cellar.
Afterwards Peter went out alone, and came
back very black and mysterious.
“I’ve been to my coal-mine,” he said;
“to-morrow evening we’ll bring home the
black diamonds in the chariot.”
It was a week later that Mrs. Viney remarked
to Mother how well this last lot of coal was
holding out.
The children hugged themselves and each other
in complicated wriggles of silent laughter
as they listened on the stairs. They had all
forgotten by now that there had ever been
any doubt in Peter’s mind as to whether
coal-mining was wrong.
But there came a dreadful night when the Station
Master put on a pair of old sand shoes that
he had worn at the seaside in his summer holiday,
and crept out very quietly to the yard where
the Sodom and Gomorrah heap of coal was, with
the whitewashed line round it. He crept out
there, and he waited like a cat by a mousehole.
On the top of the heap something small and
dark was scrabbling and rattling furtively
among the coal.
The Station Master concealed himself in the
shadow of a brake-van that had a little tin
chimney and was labelled:—
G. N. and S. R.
34576
Return at once to
White Heather Sidings
and in this concealment he lurked till the
small thing on the top of the heap ceased
to scrabble and rattle, came to the edge of
the heap, cautiously let itself down, and
lifted something after it. Then the arm of
the Station Master was raised, the hand of
the Station Master fell on a collar, and there
was Peter firmly held by the jacket, with
an old carpenter’s bag full of coal in his
trembling clutch.
“So I’ve caught you at last, have I, you
young thief?” said the Station Master.
“I’m not a thief,” said Peter, as firmly
as he could. “I’m a coal-miner.”
“Tell that to the Marines,” said the Station
Master.
“It would be just as true whoever I told
it to,” said Peter.
“You’re right there,” said the man,
who held him. “Stow your jaw, you young
rip, and come along to the station.”
“Oh, no,” cried in the darkness an agonised
voice that was not Peter’s.
“Not the POLICE station!” said another
voice from the darkness.
“Not yet,” said the Station Master. “The
Railway Station first. Why, it’s a regular
gang. Any more of you?”
“Only us,” said Bobbie and Phyllis, coming
out of the shadow of another truck labelled
Staveley Colliery, and bearing on it the legend
in white chalk: ‘Wanted in No. 1 Road.’
“What do you mean by spying on a fellow
like this?” said Peter, angrily.
“Time someone did spy on you, I think,”
said the Station Master. “Come along to
the station.”
“Oh, DON’T!” said Bobbie. “Can’t
you decide NOW what you’ll do to us? It’s
our fault just as much as Peter’s. We helped
to carry the coal away—and we knew where
he got it.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Peter.
“Yes, we did,” said Bobbie. “We knew
all the time. We only pretended we didn’t
just to humour you.”
Peter’s cup was full. He had mined for coal,
he had struck coal, he had been caught, and
now he learned that his sisters had ‘humoured’
him.
“Don’t hold me!” he said. “I won’t
run away.”
The Station Master loosed Peter’s collar,
struck a match and looked at them by its flickering
light.
“Why,” said he, “you’re the children
from the Three Chimneys up yonder. So nicely
dressed, too. Tell me now, what made you do
such a thing? Haven’t you ever been to church
or learned your catechism or anything, not
to know it’s wicked to steal?” He spoke
much more gently now, and Peter said:—
“I didn’t think it was stealing. I was
almost sure it wasn’t. I thought if I took
it from the outside part of the heap, perhaps
it would be. But in the middle I thought I
could fairly count it only mining. It’ll
take thousands of years for you to burn up
all that coal and get to the middle parts.”
“Not quite. But did you do it for a lark
or what?”
“Not much lark carting that beastly heavy
stuff up the hill,” said Peter, indignantly.
“Then why did you?” The Station Master’s
voice was so much kinder now that Peter replied:—
“You know that wet day? Well, Mother said
we were too poor to have a fire. We always
had fires when it was cold at our other house,
and—”
“DON’T!” interrupted Bobbie, in a whisper.
“Well,” said the Station Master, rubbing
his chin thoughtfully, “I’ll tell you
what I’ll do. I’ll look over it this once.
But you remember, young gentleman, stealing
is stealing, and what’s mine isn’t yours,
whether you call it mining or whether you
don’t. Run along home.”
“Do you mean you aren’t going to do anything
to us? Well, you are a brick,” said Peter,
with enthusiasm.
“You’re a dear,” said Bobbie.
“You’re a darling,” said Phyllis.
“That’s all right,” said the Station
Master.
And on this they parted.
“Don’t speak to me,” said Peter, as
the three went up the hill. “You’re spies
and traitors—that’s what you are.”
But the girls were too glad to have Peter
between them, safe and free, and on the way
to Three Chimneys and not to the Police Station,
to mind much what he said.
“We DID say it was us as much as you,”
said Bobbie, gently.
“Well—and it wasn’t.”
“It would have come to the same thing in
Courts with judges,” said Phyllis. “Don’t
be snarky, Peter. It isn’t our fault your
secrets are so jolly easy to find out.”
She took his arm, and he let her.
“There’s an awful lot of coal in the cellar,
anyhow,” he went on.
“Oh, don’t!” said Bobbie. “I don’t
think we ought to be glad about THAT.”
“I don’t know,” said Peter, plucking
up a spirit. “I’m not at all sure, even
now, that mining is a crime.”
But the girls were quite sure. And they were
also quite sure that he was quite sure, however
little he cared
to own it.
Chapter III. The old gentleman.
After the adventure of Peter’s Coal-mine,
it seemed well to the children to keep away
from the station—but they did not, they
could not, keep away from the railway. They
had lived all their lives in a street where
cabs and omnibuses rumbled by at all hours,
and the carts of butchers and bakers and candlestick
makers (I never saw a candlestick-maker’s
cart; did you?) might occur at any moment.
Here in the deep silence of the sleeping country
the only things that went by were the trains.
They seemed to be all that was left to link
the children to the old life that had once
been theirs. Straight down the hill in front
of Three Chimneys the daily passage of their
six feet began to mark a path across the crisp,
short turf. They began to know the hours when
certain trains passed, and they gave names
to them. The 9.15 up was called the Green
Dragon. The 10.7 down was the Worm of Wantley.
The midnight town express, whose shrieking
rush they sometimes woke from their dreams
to hear, was the Fearsome Fly-by-night. Peter
got up once, in chill starshine, and, peeping
at it through his curtains, named it on the
spot.
It was by the Green Dragon that the old gentleman
travelled. He was a very nice-looking old
gentleman, and he looked as if he were nice,
too, which is not at all the same thing. He
had a fresh-coloured, clean-shaven face and
white hair, and he wore rather odd-shaped
collars and a top-hat that wasn’t exactly
the same kind as other people’s. Of course
the children didn’t see all this at first.
In fact the first thing they noticed about
the old gentleman was his hand.
It was one morning as they sat on the fence
waiting for the Green Dragon, which was three
and a quarter minutes late by Peter’s Waterbury
watch that he had had given him on his last
birthday.
“The Green Dragon’s going where Father
is,” said Phyllis; “if it were a really
real dragon, we could stop it and ask it to
take our love to Father.”
“Dragons don’t carry people’s love,”
said Peter; “they’d be above it.”
“Yes, they do, if you tame them thoroughly
first. They fetch and carry like pet spaniels,”
said Phyllis, “and feed out of your hand.
I wonder why Father never writes to us.”
“Mother says he’s been too busy,” said
Bobbie; “but he’ll write soon, she says.”
“I say,” Phyllis suggested, “let’s
all wave to the Green Dragon as it goes by.
If it’s a magic dragon, it’ll understand
and take our loves to Father. And if it isn’t,
three waves aren’t much. We shall never
miss them.”
So when the Green Dragon tore shrieking out
of the mouth of its dark lair, which was the
tunnel, all three children stood on the railing
and waved their pocket-handkerchiefs without
stopping to think whether they were clean
handkerchiefs or the reverse. They were, as
a matter of fact, very much the reverse.
And out of a first-class carriage a hand waved
back. A quite clean hand. It held a newspaper.
It was the old gentleman’s hand.
After this it became the custom for waves
to be exchanged between the children and the
9.15.
And the children, especially the girls, liked
to think that perhaps the old gentleman knew
Father, and would meet him ‘in business,’
wherever that shady retreat might be, and
tell him how his three children stood on a
rail far away in the green country and waved
their love to him every morning, wet or fine.
For they were now able to go out in all sorts
of weather such as they would never have been
allowed to go out in when they lived in their
villa house. This was Aunt Emma’s doing,
and the children felt more and more that they
had not been quite fair to this unattractive
aunt, when they found how useful were the
long gaiters and waterproof coats that they
had laughed at her for buying for them.
Mother, all this time, was very busy with
her writing. She used to send off a good many
long blue envelopes with stories in them—and
large envelopes of different sizes and colours
used to come to her. Sometimes she would sigh
when she opened them and say:—
“Another story come home to roost. Oh, dear,
Oh, dear!” and then the children would be
very sorry.
But sometimes she would wave the envelope
in the air and say:—“Hooray, hooray. Here’s
a sensible Editor. He’s taken my story and
this is the proof of it.”
At first the children thought ‘the Proof’
meant the letter the sensible Editor had written,
but they presently got to know that the proof
was long slips of paper with the story printed
on them.
Whenever an Editor was sensible there were
buns for tea.
One day Peter was going down to the village
to get buns to celebrate the sensibleness
of the Editor of the Children’s Globe, when
he met the Station Master.
Peter felt very uncomfortable, for he had
now had time to think over the affair of the
coal-mine. He did not like to say “Good
morning” to the Station Master, as you usually
do to anyone you meet on a lonely road, because
he had a hot feeling, which spread even to
his ears, that the Station Master might not
care to speak to a person who had stolen coals.
‘Stolen’ is a nasty word, but Peter felt
it was the right one. So he looked down, and
said Nothing.
It was the Station Master who said “Good
morning” as he passed by. And Peter answered,
“Good morning.” Then he thought:—
“Perhaps he doesn’t know who I am by daylight,
or he wouldn’t be so polite.”
And he did not like the feeling which thinking
this gave him. And then before he knew what
he was going to do he ran after the Station
Master, who stopped when he heard Peter’s
hasty boots crunching the road, and coming
up with him very breathless and with his ears
now quite magenta-coloured, he said:—
“I don’t want you to be polite to me if
you don’t know me when you see me.”
“Eh?” said the Station Master.
“I thought perhaps you didn’t know it
was me that took the coals,” Peter went
on, “when you said ‘Good morning.’ But
it was, and I’m sorry. There.”
“Why,” said the Station Master, “I wasn’t
thinking anything at all about the precious
coals. Let bygones be bygones. And where were
you off to in such a hurry?”
“I’m going to buy buns for tea,” said
Peter.
“I thought you were all so poor,” said
the Station Master.
“So we are,” said Peter, confidentially,
“but we always have three pennyworth of
halfpennies for tea whenever Mother sells
a story or a poem or anything.”
“Oh,” said the Station Master, “so your
Mother writes stories, does she?”
“The beautifulest you ever read,” said
Peter.
“You ought to be very proud to have such
a clever Mother.”
“Yes,” said Peter, “but she used to
play with us more before she had to be so
clever.”
“Well,” said the Station Master, “I
must be getting along. You give us a look
in at the Station whenever you feel so inclined.
And as to coals, it’s a word that—well—oh,
no, we never mention it, eh?”
“Thank you,” said Peter. “I’m very
glad it’s all straightened out between us.”
And he went on across the canal bridge to
the village to get the buns, feeling more
comfortable in his mind than he had felt since
the hand of the Station Master had fastened
on his collar that night among the coals.
Next day when they had sent the threefold
wave of greeting to Father by the Green Dragon,
and the old gentleman had waved back as usual,
Peter proudly led the way to the station.
“But ought we?” said Bobbie.
“After the coals, she means,” Phyllis
explained.
“I met the Station Master yesterday,”
said Peter, in an offhand way, and he pretended
not to hear what Phyllis had said; “he expresspecially
invited us to go down any time we liked.”
“After the coals?” repeated Phyllis. “Stop
a minute—my bootlace is undone again.”
“It always IS undone again,” said Peter,
“and the Station Master was more of a gentleman
than you’ll ever be, Phil—throwing coal
at a chap’s head like that.”
Phyllis did up her bootlace and went on in
silence, but her shoulders shook, and presently
a fat tear fell off her nose and splashed
on the metal of the railway line. Bobbie saw
it.
“Why, what’s the matter, darling?” she
said, stopping short and putting her arm round
the heaving shoulders.
“He called me un-un-ungentlemanly,” sobbed
Phyllis. “I didn’t never call him unladylike,
not even when he tied my Clorinda to the firewood
bundle and burned her at the stake for a martyr.”
Peter had indeed perpetrated this outrage
a year or two before.
“Well, you began, you know,” said Bobbie,
honestly, “about coals and all that. Don’t
you think you’d better both unsay everything
since the wave, and let honour be satisfied?”
“I will if Peter will,” said Phyllis,
sniffling.
“All right,” said Peter; “honour is
satisfied. Here, use my hankie, Phil, for
goodness’ sake, if you’ve lost yours as
usual. I wonder what you do with them.”
“You had my last one,” said Phyllis, indignantly,
“to tie up the rabbit-hutch door with. But
you’re very ungrateful. It’s quite right
what it says in the poetry book about sharper
than a serpent it is to have a toothless child—but
it means ungrateful when it says toothless.
Miss Lowe told me so.”
“All right,” said Peter, impatiently,
“I’m sorry. THERE! Now will you come on?”
They reached the station and spent a joyous
two hours with the Porter. He was a worthy
man and seemed never tired of answering the
questions that begin with “Why—” which
many people in higher ranks of life often
seem weary of.
He told them many things that they had not
known before—as, for instance, that the
things that hook carriages together are called
couplings, and that the pipes like great serpents
that hang over the couplings are meant to
stop the train with.
“If you could get a holt of one o’ them
when the train is going and pull ‘em apart,”
said he, “she’d stop dead off with a jerk.”
“Who’s she?” said Phyllis.
“The train, of course,” said the Porter.
After that the train was never again ‘It’
to the children.
“And you know the thing in the carriages
where it says on it, ‘Five pounds’ fine
for improper use.’ If you was to improperly
use that, the train ‘ud stop.”
“And if you used it properly?” said Roberta.
“It ‘ud stop just the same, I suppose,”
said he, “but it isn’t proper use unless
you’re being murdered. There was an old
lady once—someone kidded her on it was a
refreshment-room bell, and she used it improper,
not being in danger of her life, though hungry,
and when the train stopped and the guard came
along expecting to find someone weltering
in their last moments, she says, ‘Oh, please,
Mister, I’ll take a glass of stout and a
bath bun,’ she says. And the train was seven
minutes behind her time as it was.”
“What did the guard say to the old lady?”
“I dunno,” replied the Porter, “but
I lay she didn’t forget it in a hurry, whatever
it was.”
In such delightful conversation the time went
by all too quickly.
The Station Master came out once or twice
from that sacred inner temple behind the place
where the hole is that they sell you tickets
through, and was most jolly with them all.
“Just as if coal had never been discovered,”
Phyllis whispered to her sister.
He gave them each an orange, and promised
to take them up into the signal-box one of
these days, when he wasn’t so busy.
Several trains went through the station, and
Peter noticed for the first time that engines
have numbers on them, like cabs.
“Yes,” said the Porter, “I knowed a
young gent as used to take down the numbers
of every single one he seed; in a green note-book
with silver corners it was, owing to his father
being very well-to-do in the wholesale stationery.”
Peter felt that he could take down numbers,
too, even if he was not the son of a wholesale
stationer. As he did not happen to have a
green leather note-book with silver corners,
the Porter gave him a yellow envelope and
on it he noted:—
379
663
and felt that this was the beginning of what
would be a most interesting collection.
That night at tea he asked Mother if she had
a green leather note-book with silver corners.
She had not; but when she heard what he wanted
it for she gave him a little black one.
“It has a few pages torn out,” said she;
“but it will hold quite a lot of numbers,
and when it’s full I’ll give you another.
I’m so glad you like the railway. Only,
please, you mustn’t walk on the line.”
“Not if we face the way the train’s coming?”
asked Peter, after a gloomy pause, in which
glances of despair were exchanged.
“No—really not,” said Mother.
Then Phyllis said, “Mother, didn’t YOU
ever walk on the railway lines when you were
little?”
Mother was an honest and honourable Mother,
so she had to say, “Yes.”
“Well, then,” said Phyllis.
“But, darlings, you don’t know how fond
I am of you. What should I do if you got hurt?”
“Are you fonder of us than Granny was of
you when you were little?” Phyllis asked.
Bobbie made signs to her to stop, but Phyllis
never did see signs, no matter how plain they
might be.
Mother did not answer for a minute. She got
up to put more water in the teapot.
“No one,” she said at last, “ever loved
anyone more than my mother loved me.”
Then she was quiet again, and Bobbie kicked
Phyllis hard under the table, because Bobbie
understood a little bit the thoughts that
were making Mother so quiet—the thoughts
of the time when Mother was a little girl
and was all the world to HER mother. It seems
so easy and natural to run to Mother when
one is in trouble. Bobbie understood a little
how people do not leave off running to their
mothers when they are in trouble even when
they are grown up, and she thought she knew
a little what it must be to be sad, and have
no mother to run to any more.
So she kicked Phyllis, who said:—
“What are you kicking me like that for,
Bob?”
And then Mother laughed a little and sighed
and said:—
“Very well, then. Only let me be sure you
do know which way the trains come—and don’t
walk on the line near the tunnel or near corners.”
“Trains keep to the left like carriages,”
said Peter, “so if we keep to the right,
we’re bound to see them coming.”
“Very well,” said Mother, and I dare say
you think that she ought not to have said
it. But she remembered about when she was
a little girl herself, and she did say it—and
neither her own children nor you nor any other
children in the world could ever understand
exactly what it cost her to do it. Only some
few of you, like Bobbie, may understand a
very little bit.
It was the very next day that Mother had to
stay in bed because her head ached so. Her
hands were burning hot, and she would not
eat anything, and her throat was very sore.
“If I was you, Mum,” said Mrs. Viney,
“I should take and send for the doctor.
There’s a lot of catchy complaints a-going
about just now. My sister’s eldest—she
took a chill and it went to her inside, two
years ago come Christmas, and she’s never
been the same gell since.”
Mother wouldn’t at first, but in the evening
she felt so much worse that Peter was sent
to the house in the village that had three
laburnum trees by the gate, and on the gate
a brass plate with W. W. Forrest, M.D., on
it.
W. W. Forrest, M.D., came at once. He talked
to Peter on the way back. He seemed a most
charming and sensible man, interested in railways,
and rabbits, and really important things.
When he had seen Mother, he said it was influenza.
“Now, Lady Grave-airs,” he said in the
hall to Bobbie, “I suppose you’ll want
to be head-nurse.”
“Of course,” said she.
“Well, then, I’ll send down some medicine.
Keep up a good fire. Have some strong beef
tea made ready to give her as soon as the
fever goes down. She can have grapes now,
and beef essence—and soda-water and milk,
and you’d better get in a bottle of brandy.
The best brandy. Cheap brandy is worse than
poison.”
She asked him to write it all down, and he
did.
When Bobbie showed Mother the list he had
written, Mother laughed. It WAS a laugh, Bobbie
decided, though it was rather odd and feeble.
“Nonsense,” said Mother, laying in bed
with eyes as bright as beads. “I can’t
afford all that rubbish. Tell Mrs. Viney to
boil two pounds of scrag-end of the neck for
your dinners to-morrow, and I can have some
of the broth. Yes, I should like some more
water now, love. And will you get a basin
and sponge my hands?”
Roberta obeyed. When she had done everything
she could to make Mother less uncomfortable,
she went down to the others. Her cheeks were
very red, her lips set tight, and her eyes
almost as bright as Mother’s.
She told them what the Doctor had said, and
what Mother had said.
“And now,” said she, when she had told
all, “there’s no one but us to do anything,
and we’ve got to do it. I’ve got the shilling
for the mutton.”
“We can do without the beastly mutton,”
said Peter; “bread and butter will support
life. People have lived on less on desert
islands many a time.”
“Of course,” said his sister. And Mrs.
Viney was sent to the village to get as much
brandy and soda-water and beef tea as she
could buy for a shilling.
“But even if we never have anything to eat
at all,” said Phyllis, “you can’t get
all those other things with our dinner money.”
“No,” said Bobbie, frowning, “we must
find out some other way. Now THINK, everybody,
just as hard as ever you can.”
They did think. And presently they talked.
And later, when Bobbie had gone up to sit
with Mother in case she wanted anything, the
other two were very busy with scissors and
a white sheet, and a paint brush, and the
pot of Brunswick black that Mrs. Viney used
for grates and fenders. They did not manage
to do what they wished, exactly, with the
first sheet, so they took another out of the
linen cupboard. It did not occur to them that
they were spoiling good sheets which cost
good money. They only knew that they were
making a good—but what they were making
comes later.
Bobbie’s bed had been moved into Mother’s
room, and several times in the night she got
up to mend the fire, and to give her mother
milk and soda-water. Mother talked to herself
a good deal, but it did not seem to mean anything.
And once she woke up suddenly and called out:
“Mamma, mamma!” and Bobbie knew she was
calling for Granny, and that she had forgotten
that it was no use calling, because Granny
was dead.
In the early morning Bobbie heard her name
and jumped out of bed and ran to Mother’s
bedside.
“Oh—ah, yes—I think I was asleep,”
said Mother. “My poor little duck, how tired
you’ll be—I do hate to give you all this
trouble.”
“Trouble!” said Bobbie.
“Ah, don’t cry, sweet,” Mother said;
“I shall be all right in a day or two.”
And Bobbie said, “Yes,” and tried to smile.
When you are used to ten hours of solid sleep,
to get up three or four times in your sleep-time
makes you feel as though you had been up all
night. Bobbie felt quite stupid and her eyes
were sore and stiff, but she tidied the room,
and arranged everything neatly before the
Doctor came.
This was at half-past eight.
“Everything going on all right, little Nurse?”
he said at the front door. “Did you get
the brandy?”
“I’ve got the brandy,” said Bobbie,
“in a little flat bottle.”
“I didn’t see the grapes or the beef tea,
though,” said he.
“No,” said Bobbie, firmly, “but you
will to-morrow. And there’s some beef stewing
in the oven for beef tea.”
“Who told you to do that?” he asked.
“I noticed what Mother did when Phil had
mumps.”
“Right,” said the Doctor. “Now you get
your old woman to sit with your mother, and
then you eat a good breakfast, and go straight
to bed and sleep till dinner-time. We can’t
afford to have the head-nurse ill.”
He was really quite a nice doctor.
When the 9.15 came out of the tunnel that
morning the old gentleman in the first-class
carriage put down his newspaper, and got ready
to wave his hand to the three children on
the fence. But this morning there were not
three. There was only one. And that was Peter.
Peter was not on the railings either, as usual.
He was standing in front of them in an attitude
like that of a show-man showing off the animals
in a menagerie, or of the kind clergyman when
he points with a wand at the ‘Scenes from
Palestine,’ when there is a magic-lantern
and he is explaining it.
Peter was pointing, too. And what he was pointing
at was a large white sheet nailed against
the fence. On the sheet there were thick black
letters more than a foot long.
Some of them had run a little, because of
Phyllis having put the Brunswick black on
too eagerly, but the words were quite easy
to read.
And this what the old gentleman and several
other people in the train read in the large
black letters on the white sheet:—
LOOK OUT AT THE STATION.
A good many people did look out at the station
and were disappointed, for they saw nothing
unusual. The old gentleman looked out, too,
and at first he too saw nothing more unusual
than the gravelled platform and the sunshine
and the wallflowers and forget-me-nots in
the station borders. It was only just as the
train was beginning to puff and pull itself
together to start again that he saw Phyllis.
She was quite out of breath with running.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought I’d missed
you. My bootlaces would keep coming down and
I fell over them twice. Here, take it.”
She thrust a warm, dampish letter into his
hand as the train moved.
He leaned back in his corner and opened the
letter. This is what he read:—
“Dear Mr. We do not know your name.
Mother is ill and the doctor says to give
her the things at the end of the letter, but
she says she can’t aford it, and to get
mutton for us and she will have the broth.
We do not know anybody here but you, because
Father is away and we do not know the address.
Father will pay you, or if he has lost all
his money, or anything, Peter will pay you
when he is a man. We promise it on our honer.
I.O.U. for all the things Mother wants.
“sined Peter.
“Will you give the parsel to the Station
Master, because of us not knowing what train
you come down by? Say it is for Peter that
was sorry about the coals and he will know
all right.
“Roberta.
“Phyllis.
“Peter.”
Then came the list of things the Doctor had
ordered.
The old gentleman read it through once, and
his eyebrows went up. He read it twice and
smiled a little. When he had read it thrice,
he put it in his pocket and went on reading
The Times.
At about six that evening there was a knock
at the back door. The three children rushed
to open it, and there stood the friendly Porter,
who had told them so many interesting things
about railways. He dumped down a big hamper
on the kitchen flags.
“Old gent,” he said; “he asked me to
fetch it up straight away.”
“Thank you very much,” said Peter, and
then, as the Porter lingered, he added:—
“I’m most awfully sorry I haven’t got
twopence to give you like Father does, but—”
“You drop it if you please,” said the
Porter, indignantly. “I wasn’t thinking
about no tuppences. I only wanted to say I
was sorry your Mamma wasn’t so well, and
to ask how she finds herself this evening—and
I’ve fetched her along a bit of sweetbrier,
very sweet to smell it is. Twopence indeed,”
said he, and produced a bunch of sweetbrier
from his hat, “just like a conjurer,”
as Phyllis remarked afterwards.
“Thank you very much,” said Peter, “and
I beg your pardon about the twopence.”
“No offence,” said the Porter, untruly
but politely, and went.
Then the children undid the hamper. First
there was straw, and then there were fine
shavings, and then came all the things they
had asked for, and plenty of them, and then
a good many things they had not asked for;
among others peaches and port wine and two
chickens, a cardboard box of big red roses
with long stalks, and a tall thin green bottle
of lavender water, and three smaller fatter
bottles of eau-de-Cologne. There was a letter,
too.
“Dear Roberta and Phyllis and Peter,”
it said; “here are the things you want.
Your mother will want to know where they came
from. Tell her they were sent by a friend
who heard she was ill. When she is well again
you must tell her all about it, of course.
And if she says you ought not to have asked
for the things, tell her that I say you were
quite right, and that I hope she will forgive
me for taking the liberty of allowing myself
a very great pleasure.”
The letter was signed G. P. something that
the children couldn’t read.
“I think we WERE right,” said Phyllis.
“Right? Of course we were right,” said
Bobbie.
“All the same,” said Peter, with his hands
in his pockets, “I don’t exactly look
forward to telling Mother the whole truth
about it.”
“We’re not to do it till she’s well,”
said Bobbie, “and when she’s well we shall
be so happy we shan’t mind a little fuss
like that. Oh, just look at the roses! I must
take them up to her.”
“And the sweetbrier,” said Phyllis, sniffing
it loudly; “don’t forget the sweetbrier.”
“As if I should!” said Roberta. “Mother
told me the other day there was a thick hedge
of it at her mother’s house when she was
a little girl.”
Chapter IV. The engine-burglar.
What was left of the second sheet and the
Brunswick black came in very nicely to make
a banner bearing the legend
SHE IS NEARLY WELL THANK YOU
and this was displayed to the Green Dragon
about a fortnight after the arrival of the
wonderful hamper. The old gentleman saw it,
and waved a cheerful response from the train.
And when this had been done the children saw
that now was the time when they must tell
Mother what they had done when she was ill.
And it did not seem nearly so easy as they
had thought it would be. But it had to be
done. And it was done. Mother was extremely
angry. She was seldom angry, and now she was
angrier than they had ever known her. This
was horrible. But it was much worse when she
suddenly began to cry. Crying is catching,
I believe, like measles and whooping-cough.
At any rate, everyone at once found itself
taking part in a crying-party.
Mother stopped first. She dried her eyes and
then she said:—
“I’m sorry I was so angry, darlings, because
I know you didn’t understand.”
“We didn’t mean to be naughty, Mammy,”
sobbed Bobbie, and Peter and Phyllis sniffed.
“Now, listen,” said Mother; “it’s
quite true that we’re poor, but we have
enough to live on. You mustn’t go telling
everyone about our affairs—it’s not right.
And you must never, never, never ask strangers
to give you things. Now always remember that—won’t
you?”
They all hugged her and rubbed their damp
cheeks against hers and promised that they
would.
“And I’ll write a letter to your old gentleman,
and I shall tell him that I didn’t approve—oh,
of course I shall thank him, too, for his
kindness. It’s YOU I don’t approve of,
my darlings, not the old gentleman. He was
as kind as ever he could be. And you can give
the letter to the Station Master to give him—and
we won’t say any more about it.”
Afterwards, when the children were alone,
Bobbie said:—
“Isn’t Mother splendid? You catch any
other grown-up saying they were sorry they
had been angry.”
“Yes,” said Peter, “she IS splendid;
but it’s rather awful when she’s angry.”
“She’s like Avenging and Bright in the
song,” said Phyllis. “I should like to
look at her if it wasn’t so awful. She looks
so beautiful when she’s really downright
furious.”
They took the letter down to the Station Master.
“I thought you said you hadn’t got any
friends except in London,” said he.
“We’ve made him since,” said Peter.
“But he doesn’t live hereabouts?”
“No—we just know him on the railway.”
Then the Station Master retired to that sacred
inner temple behind the little window where
the tickets are sold, and the children went
down to the Porters’ room and talked to
the Porter. They learned several interesting
things from him—among others that his name
was Perks, that he was married and had three
children, that the lamps in front of engines
are called head-lights and the ones at the
back tail-lights.
“And that just shows,” whispered Phyllis,
“that trains really ARE dragons in disguise,
with proper heads and tails.”
It was on this day that the children first
noticed that all engines are not alike.
“Alike?” said the Porter, whose name was
Perks, “lor, love you, no, Miss. No more
alike nor what you an’ me are. That little
‘un without a tender as went by just now
all on her own, that was a tank, that was—she’s
off to do some shunting t’other side o’
Maidbridge. That’s as it might be you, Miss.
Then there’s goods engines, great, strong
things with three wheels each side—joined
with rods to strengthen ‘em—as it might
be me. Then there’s main-line engines as
it might be this ‘ere young gentleman when
he grows up and wins all the races at ‘is
school—so he will. The main-line engine
she’s built for speed as well as power.
That’s one to the 9.15 up.”
“The Green Dragon,” said Phyllis.
“We calls her the Snail, Miss, among ourselves,”
said the Porter. “She’s oftener be’ind’and
nor any train on the line.”
“But the engine’s green,” said Phyllis.
“Yes, Miss,” said Perks, “so’s a snail
some seasons o’ the year.”
The children agreed as they went home to dinner
that the Porter was most delightful company.
Next day was Roberta’s birthday. In the
afternoon she was politely but firmly requested
to get out of the way and keep there till
tea-time.
“You aren’t to see what we’re going
to do till it’s done; it’s a glorious
surprise,” said Phyllis.
And Roberta went out into the garden all alone.
She tried to be grateful, but she felt she
would much rather have helped in whatever
it was than have to spend her birthday afternoon
by herself, no matter how glorious the surprise
might be.
Now that she was alone, she had time to think,
and one of the things she thought of most
was what mother had said in one of those feverish
nights when her hands were so hot and her
eyes so bright.
The words were: “Oh, what a doctor’s bill
there’ll be for this!”
She walked round and round the garden among
the rose-bushes that hadn’t any roses yet,
only buds, and the lilac bushes and syringas
and American currants, and the more she thought
of the doctor’s bill, the less she liked
the thought of it.
And presently she made up her mind. She went
out through the side door of the garden and
climbed up the steep field to where the road
runs along by the canal. She walked along
until she came to the bridge that crosses
the canal and leads to the village, and here
she waited. It was very pleasant in the sunshine
to lean one’s elbows on the warm stone of
the bridge and look down at the blue water
of the canal. Bobbie had never seen any other
canal, except the Regent’s Canal, and the
water of that is not at all a pretty colour.
And she had never seen any river at all except
the Thames, which also would be all the better
if its face was washed.
Perhaps the children would have loved the
canal as much as the railway, but for two
things. One was that they had found the railway
FIRST—on that first, wonderful morning when
the house and the country and the moors and
rocks and great hills were all new to them.
They had not found the canal till some days
later. The other reason was that everyone
on the railway had been kind to them—the
Station Master, the Porter, and the old gentleman
who waved. And the people on the canal were
anything but kind.
The people on the canal were, of course, the
bargees, who steered the slow barges up and
down, or walked beside the old horses that
trampled up the mud of the towing-path, and
strained at the long tow-ropes.
Peter had once asked one of the bargees the
time, and had been told to “get out of that,”
in a tone so fierce that he did not stop to
say anything about his having just as much
right on the towing-path as the man himself.
Indeed, he did not even think of saying it
till some time later.
Then another day when the children thought
they would like to fish in the canal, a boy
in a barge threw lumps of coal at them, and
one of these hit Phyllis on the back of the
neck. She was just stooping down to tie up
her bootlace—and though the coal hardly
hurt at all it made her not care very much
about going on fishing.
On the bridge, however, Roberta felt quite
safe, because she could look down on the canal,
and if any boy showed signs of meaning to
throw coal, she could duck behind the parapet.
Presently there was a sound of wheels, which
was just what she expected.
The wheels were the wheels of the Doctor’s
dogcart, and in the cart, of course, was the
Doctor.
He pulled up, and called out:—
“Hullo, head nurse! Want a lift?”
“I wanted to see you,” said Bobbie.
“Your mother’s not worse, I hope?” said
the Doctor.
“No—but—”
“Well, skip in, then, and we’ll go for
a drive.”
Roberta climbed in and the brown horse was
made to turn round—which it did not like
at all, for it was looking forward to its
tea—I mean its oats.
“This IS jolly,” said Bobbie, as the dogcart
flew along the road by the canal.
“We could throw a stone down any one of
your three chimneys,” said the Doctor, as
they passed the house.
“Yes,” said Bobbie, “but you’d have
to be a jolly good shot.”
“How do you know I’m not?” said the
Doctor. “Now, then, what’s the trouble?”
Bobbie fidgeted with the hook of the driving
apron.
“Come, out with it,” said the Doctor.
“It’s rather hard, you see,” said Bobbie,
“to out with it; because of what Mother
said.”
“What DID Mother say?”
“She said I wasn’t to go telling everyone
that we’re poor. But you aren’t everyone,
are you?”
“Not at all,” said the Doctor, cheerfully.
“Well?”
“Well, I know doctors are very extravagant—I
mean expensive, and Mrs. Viney told me that
her doctoring only cost her twopence a week
because she belonged to a Club.”
“Yes?”
“You see she told me what a good doctor
you were, and I asked her how she could afford
you, because she’s much poorer than we are.
I’ve been in her house and I know. And then
she told me about the Club, and I thought
I’d ask you—and—oh, I don’t want Mother
to be worried! Can’t we be in the Club,
too, the same as Mrs. Viney?”
The Doctor was silent. He was rather poor
himself, and he had been pleased at getting
a new family to attend. So I think his feelings
at that minute were rather mixed.
“You aren’t cross with me, are you?”
said Bobbie, in a very small voice.
The Doctor roused himself.
“Cross? How could I be? You’re a very
sensible little woman. Now look here, don’t
you worry. I’ll make it all right with your
Mother, even if I have to make a special brand-new
Club all for her. Look here, this is where
the Aqueduct begins.”
“What’s an Aque—what’s its name?”
asked Bobbie.
“A water bridge,” said the Doctor. “Look.”
The road rose to a bridge over the canal.
To the left was a steep rocky cliff with trees
and shrubs growing in the cracks of the rock.
And the canal here left off running along
the top of the hill and started to run on
a bridge of its own—a great bridge with
tall arches that went right across the valley.
Bobbie drew a long breath.
“It IS grand, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s
like pictures in the History of Rome.”
“Right!” said the Doctor, “that’s
just exactly what it IS like. The Romans were
dead nuts on aqueducts. It’s a splendid
piece of engineering.”
“I thought engineering was making engines.”
“Ah, there are different sorts of engineering—making
road and bridges and tunnels is one kind.
And making fortifications is another. Well,
we must be turning back. And, remember, you
aren’t to worry about doctor’s bills or
you’ll be ill yourself, and then I’ll
send you in a bill as long as the aqueduct.”
When Bobbie had parted from the Doctor at
the top of the field that ran down from the
road to Three Chimneys, she could not feel
that she had done wrong. She knew that Mother
would perhaps think differently. But Bobbie
felt that for once she was the one who was
right, and she scrambled down the rocky slope
with a really happy feeling.
Phyllis and Peter met her at the back door.
They were unnaturally clean and neat, and
Phyllis had a red bow in her hair. There was
only just time for Bobbie to make herself
tidy and tie up her hair with a blue bow before
a little bell rang.
“There!” said Phyllis, “that’s to
show the surprise is ready. Now you wait till
the bell rings again and then you may come
into the dining-room.”
So Bobbie waited.
“Tinkle, tinkle,” said the little bell,
and Bobbie went into the dining-room, feeling
rather shy. Directly she opened the door she
found herself, as it seemed, in a new world
of light and flowers and singing. Mother and
Peter and Phyllis were standing in a row at
the end of the table. The shutters were shut
and there were twelve candles on the table,
one for each of Roberta’s years. The table
was covered with a sort of pattern of flowers,
and at Roberta’s place was a thick wreath
of forget-me-nots and several most interesting
little packages. And Mother and Phyllis and
Peter were singing—to the first part of
the tune of St. Patrick’s Day. Roberta knew
that Mother had written the words on purpose
for her birthday. It was a little way of Mother’s
on birthdays. It had begun on Bobbie’s fourth
birthday when Phyllis was a baby. Bobbie remembered
learning the verses to say to Father ‘for
a surprise.’ She wondered if Mother had
remembered, too. The four-year-old verse had
been:—
Daddy dear, I’m only four
And I’d rather not be more.
Four’s the nicest age to be,
Two and two and one and three.
What I love is two and two,
Mother, Peter, Phil, and you.
What you love is one and three,
Mother, Peter, Phil, and me.
Give your little girl a kiss
Because she learned and told you this.
The song the others were singing now went
like this:—
Our darling Roberta,
No sorrow shall hurt her
If we can prevent it
Her whole life long.
Her birthday’s our fete day,
We’ll make it our great day,
And give her our presents
And sing her our song.
May pleasures attend her
And may the Fates send her
The happiest journey
Along her life’s way.
With skies bright above her
And dear ones to love her!
Dear Bob! Many happy
Returns of the day!
When they had finished singing they cried,
“Three cheers for our Bobbie!” and gave
them very loudly. Bobbie felt exactly as though
she were going to cry—you know that odd
feeling in the bridge of your nose and the
pricking in your eyelids? But before she had
time to begin they were all kissing and hugging
her.
“Now,” said Mother, “look at your presents.”
They were very nice presents. There was a
green and red needle-book that Phyllis had
made herself in secret moments. There was
a darling little silver brooch of Mother’s
shaped like a buttercup, which Bobbie had
known and loved for years, but which she had
never, never thought would come to be her
very own. There was also a pair of blue glass
vases from Mrs. Viney. Roberta had seen and
admired them in the village shop. And there
were three birthday cards with pretty pictures
and wishes.
Mother fitted the forget-me-not crown on Bobbie’s
brown head.
“And now look at the table,” she said.
There was a cake on the table covered with
white sugar, with ‘Dear Bobbie’ on it
in pink sweets, and there were buns and jam;
but the nicest thing was that the big table
was almost covered with flowers—wallflowers
were laid all round the tea-tray—there was
a ring of forget-me-nots round each plate.
The cake had a wreath of white lilac round
it, and in the middle was something that looked
like a pattern all done with single blooms
of lilac or wallflower or laburnum.
“It’s a map—a map of the railway!”
cried Peter. “Look—those lilac lines are
the metals—and there’s the station done
in brown wallflowers. The laburnum is the
train, and there are the signal-boxes, and
the road up to here—and those fat red daisies
are us three waving to the old gentleman—that’s
him, the pansy in the laburnum train.”
“And there’s ‘Three Chimneys’ done
in the purple primroses,” said Phyllis.
“And that little tiny rose-bud is Mother
looking out for us when we’re late for tea.
Peter invented it all, and we got all the
flowers from the station. We thought you’d
like it better.”
“That’s my present,” said Peter, suddenly
dumping down his adored steam-engine on the
table in front of her. Its tender had been
lined with fresh white paper, and was full
of sweets.
“Oh, Peter!” cried Bobbie, quite overcome
by this munificence, “not your own dear
little engine that you’re so fond of?”
“Oh, no,” said Peter, very promptly, “not
the engine. Only the sweets.”
Bobbie couldn’t help her face changing a
little—not so much because she was disappointed
at not getting the engine, as because she
had thought it so very noble of Peter, and
now she felt she had been silly to think it.
Also she felt she must have seemed greedy
to expect the engine as well as the sweets.
So her face changed. Peter saw it. He hesitated
a minute; then his face changed, too, and
he said: “I mean not ALL the engine. I’ll
let you go halves if you like.”
“You’re a brick,” cried Bobbie; “it’s
a splendid present.” She said no more aloud,
but to herself she said:—
“That was awfully jolly decent of Peter
because I know he didn’t mean to. Well,
the broken half shall be my half of the engine,
and I’ll get it mended and give it back
to Peter for his birthday.”—“Yes, Mother
dear, I should like to cut the cake,” she
added, and tea began.
It was a delightful birthday. After tea Mother
played games with them—any game they liked—and
of course their first choice was blindman’s-buff,
in the course of which Bobbie’s forget-me-not
wreath twisted itself crookedly over one of
her ears and stayed there. Then, when it was
near bed-time and time to calm down, Mother
had a lovely new story to read to them.
“You won’t sit up late working, will you,
Mother?” Bobbie asked as they said good
night.
And Mother said no, she wouldn’t—she would
only just write to Father and then go to bed.
But when Bobbie crept down later to bring
up her presents—for she felt she really
could not be separated from them all night—Mother
was not writing, but leaning her head on her
arms and her arms on the table. I think it
was rather good of Bobbie to slip quietly
away, saying over and over, “She doesn’t
want me to know she’s unhappy, and I won’t
know; I won’t know.” But it made a sad
end to the birthday.
* * * * * *
The very next morning Bobbie began to watch
her opportunity to get Peter’s engine mended
secretly. And the opportunity came the very
next afternoon.
Mother went by train to the nearest town to
do shopping. When she went there, she always
went to the Post-office. Perhaps to post her
letters to Father, for she never gave them
to the children or Mrs. Viney to post, and
she never went to the village herself. Peter
and Phyllis went with her. Bobbie wanted an
excuse not to go, but try as she would she
couldn’t think of a good one. And just when
she felt that all was lost, her frock caught
on a big nail by the kitchen door and there
was a great criss-cross tear all along the
front of the skirt. I assure you this was
really an accident. So the others pitied her
and went without her, for there was no time
for her to change, because they were rather
late already and had to hurry to the station
to catch the train.
When they had gone, Bobbie put on her everyday
frock, and went down to the railway. She did
not go into the station, but she went along
the line to the end of the platform where
the engine is when the down train is alongside
the platform—the place where there are a
water tank and a long, limp, leather hose,
like an elephant’s trunk. She hid behind
a bush on the other side of the railway. She
had the toy engine done up in brown paper,
and she waited patiently with it under her
arm.
Then when the next train came in and stopped,
Bobbie went across the metals of the up-line
and stood beside the engine. She had never
been so close to an engine before. It looked
much larger and harder than she had expected,
and it made her feel very small indeed, and,
somehow, very soft—as if she could very,
very easily be hurt rather badly.
“I know what silk-worms feel like now,”
said Bobbie to herself.
The engine-driver and fireman did not see
her. They were leaning out on the other side,
telling the Porter a tale about a dog and
a leg of mutton.
“If you please,” said Roberta—but the
engine was blowing off steam and no one heard
her.
“If you please, Mr. Engineer,” she spoke
a little louder, but the Engine happened to
speak at the same moment, and of course Roberta’s
soft little voice hadn’t a chance.
It seemed to her that the only way would be
to climb on to the engine and pull at their
coats. The step was high, but she got her
knee on it, and clambered into the cab; she
stumbled and fell on hands and knees on the
base of the great heap of coals that led up
to the square opening in the tender. The engine
was not above the weaknesses of its fellows;
it was making a great deal more noise than
there was the slightest need for. And just
as Roberta fell on the coals, the engine-driver,
who had turned without seeing her, started
the engine, and when Bobbie had picked herself
up, the train was moving—not fast, but much
too fast for her to get off.
All sorts of dreadful thoughts came to her
all together in one horrible flash. There
were such things as express trains that went
on, she supposed, for hundreds of miles without
stopping. Suppose this should be one of them?
How would she get home again? She had no money
to pay for the return journey.
“And I’ve no business here. I’m an engine-burglar—that’s
what I am,” she thought. “I shouldn’t
wonder if they could lock me up for this.”
And the train was going faster and faster.
There was something in her throat that made
it impossible for her to speak. She tried
twice. The men had their backs to her. They
were doing something to things that looked
like taps.
Suddenly she put out her hand and caught hold
of the nearest sleeve. The man turned with
a start, and he and Roberta stood for a minute
looking at each other in silence. Then the
silence was broken by them both.
The man said, “Here’s a bloomin’ go!”
and Roberta burst into tears.
The other man said he was blooming well blest—or
something like it—but though naturally surprised
they were not exactly unkind.
“You’re a naughty little gell, that’s
what you are,” said the fireman, and the
engine-driver said:—
“Daring little piece, I call her,” but
they made her sit down on an iron seat in
the cab and told her to stop crying and tell
them what she meant by it.
She did stop, as soon as she could. One thing
that helped her was the thought that Peter
would give almost his ears to be in her place—on
a real engine—really going. The children
had often wondered whether any engine-driver
could be found noble enough to take them for
a ride on an engine—and now there she was.
She dried her eyes and sniffed earnestly.
“Now, then,” said the fireman, “out
with it. What do you mean by it, eh?”
“Oh, please,” sniffed Bobbie.
“Try again,” said the engine-driver, encouragingly.
Bobbie tried again.
“Please, Mr. Engineer,” she said, “I
did call out to you from the line, but you
didn’t hear me—and I just climbed up to
touch you on the arm—quite gently I meant
to do it—and then I fell into the coals—and
I am so sorry if I frightened you. Oh, don’t
be cross—oh, please don’t!” She sniffed
again.
“We ain’t so much CROSS,” said the fireman,
“as interested like. It ain’t every day
a little gell tumbles into our coal bunker
outer the sky, is it, Bill? What did you DO
it for—eh?”
“That’s the point,” agreed the engine-driver;
“what did you do it FOR?”
Bobbie found that she had not quite stopped
crying. The engine-driver patted her on the
back and said: “Here, cheer up, Mate. It
ain’t so bad as all that ‘ere, I’ll
be bound.”
“I wanted,” said Bobbie, much cheered
to find herself addressed as ‘Mate’—“I
only wanted to ask you if you’d be so kind
as to mend this.” She picked up the brown-paper
parcel from among the coals and undid the
string with hot, red fingers that trembled.
Her feet and legs felt the scorch of the engine
fire, but her shoulders felt the wild chill
rush of the air. The engine lurched and shook
and rattled, and as they shot under a bridge
the engine seemed to shout in her ears.
The fireman shovelled on coals.
Bobbie unrolled the brown paper and disclosed
the toy engine.
“I thought,” she said wistfully, “that
perhaps you’d mend this for me—because
you’re an engineer, you know.”
The engine-driver said he was blowed if he
wasn’t blest.
“I’m blest if I ain’t blowed,” remarked
the fireman.
But the engine-driver took the little engine
and looked at it—and the fireman ceased
for an instant to shovel coal, and looked,
too.
“It’s like your precious cheek,” said
the engine-driver—“whatever made you think
we’d be bothered tinkering penny toys?”
“I didn’t mean it for precious cheek,”
said Bobbie; “only everybody that has anything
to do with railways is so kind and good, I
didn’t think you’d mind. You don’t really—do
you?” she added, for she had seen a not
unkindly wink pass between the two.
“My trade’s driving of an engine, not
mending her, especially such a hout-size in
engines as this ‘ere,” said Bill. “An’
‘ow are we a-goin’ to get you back to
your sorrowing friends and relations, and
all be forgiven and forgotten?”
“If you’ll put me down next time you stop,”
said Bobbie, firmly, though her heart beat
fiercely against her arm as she clasped her
hands, “and lend me the money for a third-class
ticket, I’ll pay you back—honour bright.
I’m not a confidence trick like in the newspapers—really,
I’m not.”
“You’re a little lady, every inch,”
said Bill, relenting suddenly and completely.
“We’ll see you gets home safe. An’ about
this engine—Jim—ain’t you got ne’er
a pal as can use a soldering iron? Seems to
me that’s about all the little bounder wants
doing to it.”
“That’s what Father said,” Bobbie explained
eagerly. “What’s that for?”
She pointed to a little brass wheel that he
had turned as he spoke.
“That’s the injector.”
“In—what?”
“Injector to fill up the boiler.”
“Oh,” said Bobbie, mentally registering
the fact to tell the others; “that IS interesting.”
“This ‘ere’s the automatic brake,”
Bill went on, flattered by her enthusiasm.
“You just move this ‘ere little handle—do
it with one finger, you can—and the train
jolly soon stops. That’s what they call
the Power of Science in the newspapers.”
He showed her two little dials, like clock
faces, and told her how one showed how much
steam was going, and the other showed if the
brake was working properly.
By the time she had seen him shut off steam
with a big shining steel handle, Bobbie knew
more about the inside working of an engine
than she had ever thought there was to know,
and Jim had promised that his second cousin’s
wife’s brother should solder the toy engine,
or Jim would know the reason why. Besides
all the knowledge she had gained Bobbie felt
that she and Bill and Jim were now friends
for life, and that they had wholly and forever
forgiven her for stumbling uninvited among
the sacred coals of their tender.
At Stacklepoole Junction she parted from them
with warm expressions of mutual regard. They
handed her over to the guard of a returning
train—a friend of theirs—and she had the
joy of knowing what guards do in their secret
fastnesses, and understood how, when you pull
the communication cord in railway carriages,
a wheel goes round under the guard’s nose
and a loud bell rings in his ears. She asked
the guard why his van smelt so fishy, and
learned that he had to carry a lot of fish
every day, and that the wetness in the hollows
of the corrugated floor had all drained out
of boxes full of plaice and cod and mackerel
and soles and smelts.
Bobbie got home in time for tea, and she felt
as though her mind would burst with all that
had been put into it since she parted from
the others. How she blessed the nail that
had torn her frock!
“Where have you been?” asked the others.
“To the station, of course,” said Roberta.
But she would not tell a word of her adventures
till the day appointed, when she mysteriously
led them to the station at the hour of the
3.19’s transit, and proudly introduced them
to her friends, Bill and Jim. Jim’s second
cousin’s wife’s brother had not been unworthy
of the sacred trust reposed in him. The toy
engine was, literally, as good as new.
“Good-bye—oh, good-bye,” said Bobbie,
just before the engine screamed ITS good-bye.
“I shall always, always love you—and Jim’s
second cousin’s wife’s brother as well!”
And as the three children went home up the
hill, Peter hugging the engine, now quite
its own self again, Bobbie told, with joyous
leaps of the heart, the story of how she had
been an Engine-burglar.
Chapter V. Prisoners and captives.
It was one day when Mother had gone to Maidbridge.
She had gone alone, but the children were
to go to the station to meet her. And, loving
the station as they did, it was only natural
that they should be there a good hour before
there was any chance of Mother’s train arriving,
even if the train were punctual, which was
most unlikely. No doubt they would have been
just as early, even if it had been a fine
day, and all the delights of woods and fields
and rocks and rivers had been open to them.
But it happened to be a very wet day and,
for July, very cold. There was a wild wind
that drove flocks of dark purple clouds across
the sky “like herds of dream-elephants,”
as Phyllis said. And the rain stung sharply,
so that the way to the station was finished
at a run. Then the rain fell faster and harder,
and beat slantwise against the windows of
the booking office and of the chill place
that had General Waiting Room on its door.
“It’s like being in a besieged castle,”
Phyllis said; “look at the arrows of the
foe striking against the battlements!”
“It’s much more like a great garden-squirt,”
said Peter.
They decided to wait on the up side, for the
down platform looked very wet indeed, and
the rain was driving right into the little
bleak shelter where down-passengers have to
wait for their trains.
The hour would be full of incident and of
interest, for there would be two up trains
and one down to look at before the one that
should bring Mother back.
“Perhaps it’ll have stopped raining by
then,” said Bobbie; “anyhow, I’m glad
I brought Mother’s waterproof and umbrella.”
They went into the desert spot labelled General
Waiting Room, and the time passed pleasantly
enough in a game of advertisements. You know
the game, of course? It is something like
dumb Crambo. The players take it in turns
to go out, and then come back and look as
like some advertisement as they can, and the
others have to guess what advertisement it
is meant to be. Bobbie came in and sat down
under Mother’s umbrella and made a sharp
face, and everyone knew she was the fox who
sits under the umbrella in the advertisement.
Phyllis tried to make a Magic Carpet of Mother’s
waterproof, but it would not stand out stiff
and raft-like as a Magic Carpet should, and
nobody could guess it. Everyone thought Peter
was carrying things a little too far when
he blacked his face all over with coal-dust
and struck a spidery attitude and said he
was the blot that advertises somebody’s
Blue Black Writing Fluid.
It was Phyllis’s turn again, and she was
trying to look like the Sphinx that advertises
What’s-his-name’s Personally Conducted
Tours up the Nile when the sharp ting of the
signal announced the up train. The children
rushed out to see it pass. On its engine were
the particular driver and fireman who were
now numbered among the children’s dearest
friends. Courtesies passed between them. Jim
asked after the toy engine, and Bobbie pressed
on his acceptance a moist, greasy package
of toffee that she had made herself.
Charmed by this attention, the engine-driver
consented to consider her request that some
day he would take Peter for a ride on the
engine.
“Stand back, Mates,” cried the engine-driver,
suddenly, “and horf she goes.”
And sure enough, off the train went. The children
watched the tail-lights of the train till
it disappeared round the curve of the line,
and then turned to go back to the dusty freedom
of the General Waiting Room and the joys of
the advertisement game.
They expected to see just one or two people,
the end of the procession of passengers who
had given up their tickets and gone away.
Instead, the platform round the door of the
station had a dark blot round it, and the
dark blot was a crowd of people.
“Oh!” cried Peter, with a thrill of joyous
excitement, “something’s happened! Come
on!”
They ran down the platform. When they got
to the crowd, they could, of course, see nothing
but the damp backs and elbows of the people
on the crowd’s outside. Everybody was talking
at once. It was evident that something had
happened.
“It’s my belief he’s nothing worse than
a natural,” said a farmerish-looking person.
Peter saw his red, clean-shaven face as he
spoke.
“If you ask me, I should say it was a Police
Court case,” said a young man with a black
bag.
“Not it; the Infirmary more like—”
Then the voice of the Station Master was heard,
firm and official:—
“Now, then—move along there. I’ll attend
to this, if YOU please.”
But the crowd did not move. And then came
a voice that thrilled the children through
and through. For it spoke in a foreign language.
And, what is more, it was a language that
they had never heard. They had heard French
spoken and German. Aunt Emma knew German,
and used to sing a song about bedeuten and
zeiten and bin and sin. Nor was it Latin.
Peter had been in Latin for four terms.
It was some comfort, anyhow, to find that
none of the crowd understood the foreign language
any better than the children did.
“What’s that he’s saying?” asked the
farmer, heavily.
“Sounds like French to me,” said the Station
Master, who had once been to Boulogne for
the day.
“It isn’t French!” cried Peter.
“What is it, then?” asked more than one
voice. The crowd fell back a little to see
who had spoken, and Peter pressed forward,
so that when the crowd closed up again he
was in the front rank.
“I don’t know what it is,” said Peter,
“but it isn’t French. I know that.”
Then he saw what it was that the crowd had
for its centre. It was a man—the man, Peter
did not doubt, who had spoken in that strange
tongue. A man with long hair and wild eyes,
with shabby clothes of a cut Peter had not
seen before—a man whose hands and lips trembled,
and who spoke again as his eyes fell on Peter.
“No, it’s not French,” said Peter.
“Try him with French if you know so much
about it,” said the farmer-man.
“Parlay voo Frongsay?” began Peter, boldly,
and the next moment the crowd recoiled again,
for the man with the wild eyes had left leaning
against the wall, and had sprung forward and
caught Peter’s hands, and begun to pour
forth a flood of words which, though he could
not understand a word of them, Peter knew
the sound of.
“There!” said he, and turned, his hands
still clasped in the hands of the strange
shabby figure, to throw a glance of triumph
at the crowd; “there; THAT’S French.”
“What does he say?”
“I don’t know.” Peter was obliged to
own it.
“Here,” said the Station Master again;
“you move on if you please. I’LL deal
with this case.”
A few of the more timid or less inquisitive
travellers moved slowly and reluctantly away.
And Phyllis and Bobbie got near to Peter.
All three had been TAUGHT French at school.
How deeply they now wished that they had LEARNED
it! Peter shook his head at the stranger,
but he also shook his hands as warmly and
looked at him as kindly as he could. A person
in the crowd, after some hesitation, said
suddenly, “No comprenny!” and then, blushing
deeply, backed out of the press and went away.
“Take him into your room,” whispered Bobbie
to the Station Master. “Mother can talk
French. She’ll be here by the next train
from Maidbridge.”
The Station Master took the arm of the stranger,
suddenly but not unkindly. But the man wrenched
his arm away, and cowered back coughing and
trembling and trying to push the Station Master
away.
“Oh, don’t!” said Bobbie; “don’t
you see how frightened he is? He thinks you’re
going to shut him up. I know he does—look
at his eyes!”
“They’re like a fox’s eyes when the
beast’s in a trap,” said the farmer.
“Oh, let me try!” Bobbie went on; “I
do really know one or two French words if
I could only think of them.”
Sometimes, in moments of great need, we can
do wonderful things—things that in ordinary
life we could hardly even dream of doing.
Bobbie had never been anywhere near the top
of her French class, but she must have learned
something without knowing it, for now, looking
at those wild, hunted eyes, she actually remembered
and, what is more, spoke, some French words.
She said:—
“Vous attendre. Ma mere parlez Francais.
Nous—what’s the French for ‘being kind’?”
Nobody knew.
“Bong is ‘good,’” said Phyllis.
“Nous etre bong pour vous.”
I do not know whether the man understood her
words, but he understood the touch of the
hand she thrust into his, and the kindness
of the other hand that stroked his shabby
sleeve.
She pulled him gently towards the inmost sanctuary
of the Station Master. The other children
followed, and the Station Master shut the
door in the face of the crowd, which stood
a little while in the booking office talking
and looking at the fast closed yellow door,
and then by ones and twos went its way, grumbling.
Inside the Station Master’s room Bobbie
still held the stranger’s hand and stroked
his sleeve.
“Here’s a go,” said the Station Master;
“no ticket—doesn’t even know where he
wants to go. I’m not sure now but what I
ought to send for the police.”
“Oh, DON’T!” all the children pleaded
at once. And suddenly Bobbie got between the
others and the stranger, for she had seen
that he was crying.
By a most unusual piece of good fortune she
had a handkerchief in her pocket. By a still
more uncommon accident the handkerchief was
moderately clean. Standing in front of the
stranger, she got out the handkerchief and
passed it to him so that the others did not
see.
“Wait till Mother comes,” Phyllis was
saying; “she does speak French beautifully.
You’d just love to hear her.”
“I’m sure he hasn’t done anything like
you’re sent to prison for,” said Peter.
“Looks like without visible means to me,”
said the Station Master. “Well, I don’t
mind giving him the benefit of the doubt till
your Mamma comes. I SHOULD like to know what
nation’s got the credit of HIM, that I should.”
Then Peter had an idea. He pulled an envelope
out of his pocket, and showed that it was
half full of foreign stamps.
“Look here,” he said, “let’s show
him these—”
Bobbie looked and saw that the stranger had
dried his eyes with her handkerchief. So she
said: “All right.”
They showed him an Italian stamp, and pointed
from him to it and back again, and made signs
of question with their eyebrows. He shook
his head. Then they showed him a Norwegian
stamp—the common blue kind it was—and
again he signed No. Then they showed him a
Spanish one, and at that he took the envelope
from Peter’s hand and searched among the
stamps with a hand that trembled. The hand
that he reached out at last, with a gesture
as of one answering a question, contained
a RUSSIAN stamp.
“He’s Russian,” cried Peter, “or else
he’s like ‘the man who was’—in Kipling,
you know.”
The train from Maidbridge was signalled.
“I’ll stay with him till you bring Mother
in,” said Bobbie.
“You’re not afraid, Missie?”
“Oh, no,” said Bobbie, looking at the
stranger, as she might have looked at a strange
dog of doubtful temper. “You wouldn’t
hurt me, would you?”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back, a queer
crooked smile. And then he coughed again.
And the heavy rattling swish of the incoming
train swept past, and the Station Master and
Peter and Phyllis went out to meet it. Bobbie
was still holding the stranger’s hand when
they came back with Mother.
The Russian rose and bowed very ceremoniously.
Then Mother spoke in French, and he replied,
haltingly at first, but presently in longer
and longer sentences.
The children, watching his face and Mother’s,
knew that he was telling her things that made
her angry and pitying, and sorry and indignant
all at once.
“Well, Mum, what’s it all about?” The
Station Master could not restrain his curiosity
any longer.
“Oh,” said Mother, “it’s all right.
He’s a Russian, and he’s lost his ticket.
And I’m afraid he’s very ill. If you don’t
mind, I’ll take him home with me now. He’s
really quite worn out. I’ll run down and
tell you all about him to-morrow.”
“I hope you won’t find you’re taking
home a frozen viper,” said the Station Master,
doubtfully.
“Oh, no,” Mother said brightly, and she
smiled; “I’m quite sure I’m not. Why,
he’s a great man in his own country, writes
books—beautiful books—I’ve read some
of them; but I’ll tell you all about it
to-morrow.”
She spoke again in French to the Russian,
and everyone could see the surprise and pleasure
and gratitude in his eyes. He got up and politely
bowed to the Station Master, and offered his
arm most ceremoniously to Mother. She took
it, but anybody could have seen that she was
helping him along, and not he her.
“You girls run home and light a fire in
the sitting-room,” Mother said, “and Peter
had better go for the Doctor.”
But it was Bobbie who went for the Doctor.
“I hate to tell you,” she said breathlessly
when she came upon him in his shirt sleeves,
weeding his pansy-bed, “but Mother’s got
a very shabby Russian, and I’m sure he’ll
have to belong to your Club. I’m certain
he hasn’t got any money. We found him at
the station.”
“Found him! Was he lost, then?” asked
the Doctor, reaching for his coat.
“Yes,” said Bobbie, unexpectedly, “that’s
just what he was. He’s been telling Mother
the sad, sweet story of his life in French;
and she said would you be kind enough to come
directly if you were at home. He has a dreadful
cough, and he’s been crying.”
The Doctor smiled.
“Oh, don’t,” said Bobbie; “please
don’t. You wouldn’t if you’d seen him.
I never saw a man cry before. You don’t
know what it’s like.”
Dr. Forrest wished then that he hadn’t smiled.
When Bobbie and the Doctor got to Three Chimneys,
the Russian was sitting in the arm-chair that
had been Father’s, stretching his feet to
the blaze of a bright wood fire, and sipping
the tea Mother had made him.
“The man seems worn out, mind and body,”
was what the Doctor said; “the cough’s
bad, but there’s nothing that can’t be
cured. He ought to go straight to bed, though—and
let him have a fire at night.”
“I’ll make one in my room; it’s the
only one with a fireplace,” said Mother.
She did, and presently the Doctor helped the
stranger to bed.
There was a big black trunk in Mother’s
room that none of the children had ever seen
unlocked. Now, when she had lighted the fire,
she unlocked it and took some clothes out—men’s
clothes—and set them to air by the newly
lighted fire. Bobbie, coming in with more
wood for the fire, saw the mark on the night-shirt,
and looked over to the open trunk. All the
things she could see were men’s clothes.
And the name marked on the shirt was Father’s
name. Then Father hadn’t taken his clothes
with him. And that night-shirt was one of
Father’s new ones. Bobbie remembered its
being made, just before Peter’s birthday.
Why hadn’t Father taken his clothes? Bobbie
slipped from the room. As she went she heard
the key turned in the lock of the trunk. Her
heart was beating horribly. WHY hadn’t Father
taken his clothes? When Mother came out of
the room, Bobbie flung tightly clasping arms
round her waist, and whispered:—
“Mother—Daddy isn’t—isn’t DEAD,
is he?”
“My darling, no! What made you think of
anything so horrible?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Bobbie, angry
with herself, but still clinging to that resolution
of hers, not to see anything that Mother didn’t
mean her to see.
Mother gave her a hurried hug. “Daddy was
quite, QUITE well when I heard from him last,”
she said, “and he’ll come back to us some
day. Don’t fancy such horrible things, darling!”
Later on, when the Russian stranger had been
made comfortable for the night, Mother came
into the girls’ room. She was to sleep there
in Phyllis’s bed, and Phyllis was to have
a mattress on the floor, a most amusing adventure
for Phyllis. Directly Mother came in, two
white figures started up, and two eager voices
called:—
“Now, Mother, tell us all about the Russian
gentleman.”
A white shape hopped into the room. It was
Peter, dragging his quilt behind him like
the tail of a white peacock.
“We have been patient,” he said, “and
I had to bite my tongue not to go to sleep,
and I just nearly went to sleep and I bit
too hard, and it hurts ever so. DO tell us.
Make a nice long story of it.”
“I can’t make a long story of it to-night,”
said Mother; “I’m very tired.”
Bobbie knew by her voice that Mother had been
crying, but the others didn’t know.
“Well, make it as long as you can,” said
Phil, and Bobbie got her arms round Mother’s
waist and snuggled close to her.
“Well, it’s a story long enough to make
a whole book of. He’s a writer; he’s written
beautiful books. In Russia at the time of
the Czar one dared not say anything about
the rich people doing wrong, or about the
things that ought to be done to make poor
people better and happier. If one did one
was sent to prison.”
“But they CAN’T,” said Peter; “people
only go to prison when they’ve done wrong.”
“Or when the Judges THINK they’ve done
wrong,” said Mother. “Yes, that’s so
in England. But in Russia it was different.
And he wrote a beautiful book about poor people
and how to help them. I’ve read it. There’s
nothing in it but goodness and kindness. And
they sent him to prison for it. He was three
years in a horrible dungeon, with hardly any
light, and all damp and dreadful. In prison
all alone for three years.”
Mother’s voice trembled a little and stopped
suddenly.
“But, Mother,” said Peter, “that can’t
be true NOW. It sounds like something out
of a history book—the Inquisition, or something.”
“It WAS true,” said Mother; “it’s
all horribly true. Well, then they took him
out and sent him to Siberia, a convict chained
to other convicts—wicked men who’d done
all sorts of crimes—a long chain of them,
and they walked, and walked, and walked, for
days and weeks, till he thought they’d never
stop walking. And overseers went behind them
with whips—yes, whips—to beat them if
they got tired. And some of them went lame,
and some fell down, and when they couldn’t
get up and go on, they beat them, and then
left them to die. Oh, it’s all too terrible!
And at last he got to the mines, and he was
condemned to stay there for life—for life,
just for writing a good, noble, splendid book.”
“How did he get away?”
“When the war came, some of the Russian
prisoners were allowed to volunteer as soldiers.
And he volunteered. But he deserted at the
first chance he got and—”
“But that’s very cowardly, isn’t it”—said
Peter—“to desert? Especially when it’s
war.”
“Do you think he owed anything to a country
that had done THAT to him? If he did, he owed
more to his wife and children. He didn’t
know what had become of them.”
“Oh,” cried Bobbie, “he had THEM to
think about and be miserable about TOO, then,
all the time he was in prison?”
“Yes, he had them to think about and be
miserable about all the time he was in prison.
For anything he knew they might have been
sent to prison, too. They did those things
in Russia. But while he was in the mines some
friends managed to get a message to him that
his wife and children had escaped and come
to England. So when he deserted he came here
to look for them.”
“Had he got their address?” said practical
Peter.
“No; just England. He was going to London,
and he thought he had to change at our station,
and then he found he’d lost his ticket and
his purse.”
“Oh, DO you think he’ll find them?—I
mean his wife and children, not the ticket
and things.”
“I hope so. Oh, I hope and pray that he’ll
find his wife and children again.”
Even Phyllis now perceived that mother’s
voice was very unsteady.
“Why, Mother,” she said, “how very sorry
you seem to be for him!”
Mother didn’t answer for a minute. Then
she just said, “Yes,” and then she seemed
to be thinking. The children were quiet.
Presently she said, “Dears, when you say
your prayers, I think you might ask God to
show His pity upon all prisoners and captives.”
“To show His pity,” Bobbie repeated slowly,
“upon all prisoners and captives. Is that
right, Mother?”
“Yes,” said Mother, “upon all prisoners
and captives. All prisoners and captives.”
Chapter VI. Saviours of the train.
The Russian gentleman was better the next
day, and the day after that better still,
and on the third day he was well enough to
come into the garden. A basket chair was put
for him and he sat there, dressed in clothes
of Father’s which were too big for him.
But when Mother had hemmed up the ends of
the sleeves and the trousers, the clothes
did well enough. His was a kind face now that
it was no longer tired and frightened, and
he smiled at the children whenever he saw
them. They wished very much that he could
speak English. Mother wrote several letters
to people she thought might know whereabouts
in England a Russian gentleman’s wife and
family might possibly be; not to the people
she used to know before she came to live at
Three Chimneys—she never wrote to any of
them—but strange people—Members of Parliament
and Editors of papers, and Secretaries of
Societies.
And she did not do much of her story-writing,
only corrected proofs as she sat in the sun
near the Russian, and talked to him every
now and then.
The children wanted very much to show how
kindly they felt to this man who had been
sent to prison and to Siberia just for writing
a beautiful book about poor people. They could
smile at him, of course; they could and they
did. But if you smile too constantly, the
smile is apt to get fixed like the smile of
the hyaena. And then it no longer looks friendly,
but simply silly. So they tried other ways,
and brought him flowers till the place where
he sat was surrounded by little fading bunches
of clover and roses and Canterbury bells.
And then Phyllis had an idea. She beckoned
mysteriously to the others and drew them into
the back yard, and there, in a concealed spot,
between the pump and the water-butt, she said:—
“You remember Perks promising me the very
first strawberries out of his own garden?”
Perks, you will recollect, was the Porter.
“Well, I should think they’re ripe now.
Let’s go down and see.”
Mother had been down as she had promised to
tell the Station Master the story of the Russian
Prisoner. But even the charms of the railway
had been unable to tear the children away
from the neighbourhood of the interesting
stranger. So they had not been to the station
for three days.
They went now.
And, to their surprise and distress, were
very coldly received by Perks.
“‘Ighly honoured, I’m sure,” he said
when they peeped in at the door of the Porters’
room. And he went on reading his newspaper.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Oh, dear,” said Bobbie, with a sigh,
“I do believe you’re CROSS.”
“What, me? Not me!” said Perks loftily;
“it ain’t nothing to me.”
“What AIN’T nothing to you?” said Peter,
too anxious and alarmed to change the form
of words.
“Nothing ain’t nothing. What ‘appens
either ‘ere or elsewhere,” said Perks;
“if you likes to ‘ave your secrets, ‘ave
‘em and welcome. That’s what I say.”
The secret-chamber of each heart was rapidly
examined during the pause that followed. Three
heads were shaken.
“We haven’t got any secrets from YOU,”
said Bobbie at last.
“Maybe you ‘ave, and maybe you ‘aven’t,”
said Perks; “it ain’t nothing to me. And
I wish you all a very good afternoon.” He
held up the paper between him and them and
went on reading.
“Oh, DON’T!” said Phyllis, in despair;
“this is truly dreadful! Whatever it is,
do tell us.”
“We didn’t mean to do it whatever it was.”
No answer. The paper was refolded and Perks
began on another column.
“Look here,” said Peter, suddenly, “it’s
not fair. Even people who do crimes aren’t
punished without being told what it’s for—as
once they were in Russia.”
“I don’t know nothing about Russia.”
“Oh, yes, you do, when Mother came down
on purpose to tell you and Mr. Gills all about
OUR Russian.”
“Can’t you fancy it?” said Perks, indignantly;
“don’t you see ‘im a-asking of me to
step into ‘is room and take a chair and
listen to what ‘er Ladyship ‘as to say?”
“Do you mean to say you’ve not heard?”
“Not so much as a breath. I did go so far
as to put a question. And he shuts me up like
a rat-trap. ‘Affairs of State, Perks,’
says he. But I did think one o’ you would
‘a’ nipped down to tell me—you’re
here sharp enough when you want to get anything
out of old Perks”—Phyllis flushed purple
as she thought of the strawberries—“information
about locomotives or signals or the likes,”
said Perks.
“We didn’t know you didn’t know.”
“We thought Mother had told you.”
“Wewantedtotellyouonlywethoughtitwouldbestalenews.”
The three spoke all at once.
Perks said it was all very well, and still
held up the paper. Then Phyllis suddenly snatched
it away, and threw her arms round his neck.
“Oh, let’s kiss and be friends,” she
said; “we’ll say we’re sorry first,
if you like, but we didn’t really know that
you didn’t know.”
“We are so sorry,” said the others.
And Perks at last consented to accept their
apologies.
Then they got him to come out and sit in the
sun on the green Railway Bank, where the grass
was quite hot to touch, and there, sometimes
speaking one at a time, and sometimes all
together, they told the Porter the story of
the Russian Prisoner.
“Well, I must say,” said Perks; but he
did not say it—whatever it was.
“Yes, it is pretty awful, isn’t it?”
said Peter, “and I don’t wonder you were
curious about who the Russian was.”
“I wasn’t curious, not so much as interested,”
said the Porter.
“Well, I do think Mr. Gills might have told
you about it. It was horrid of him.”
“I don’t keep no down on ‘im for that,
Missie,” said the Porter; “cos why? I
see ‘is reasons. ‘E wouldn’t want to
give away ‘is own side with a tale like
that ‘ere. It ain’t human nature. A man’s
got to stand up for his own side whatever
they does. That’s what it means by Party
Politics. I should ‘a’ done the same myself
if that long-’aired chap ‘ad ‘a’ been
a Jap.”
“But the Japs didn’t do cruel, wicked
things like that,” said Bobbie.
“P’r’aps not,” said Perks, cautiously;
“still you can’t be sure with foreigners.
My own belief is they’re all tarred with
the same brush.”
“Then why were you on the side of the Japs?”
Peter asked.
“Well, you see, you must take one side or
the other. Same as with Liberals and Conservatives.
The great thing is to take your side and then
stick to it, whatever happens.”
A signal sounded.
“There’s the 3.14 up,” said Perks. “You
lie low till she’s through, and then we’ll
go up along to my place, and see if there’s
any of them strawberries ripe what I told
you about.”
“If there are any ripe, and you DO give
them to me,” said Phyllis, “you won’t
mind if I give them to the poor Russian, will
you?”
Perks narrowed his eyes and then raised his
eyebrows.
“So it was them strawberries you come down
for this afternoon, eh?” said he.
This was an awkward moment for Phyllis. To
say “yes” would seem rude and greedy,
and unkind to Perks. But she knew if she said
“no,” she would not be pleased with herself
afterwards. So—
“Yes,” she said, “it was.”
“Well done!” said the Porter; “speak
the truth and shame the—”
“But we’d have come down the very next
day if we’d known you hadn’t heard the
story,” Phyllis added hastily.
“I believe you, Missie,” said Perks, and
sprang across the line six feet in front of
the advancing train.
The girls hated to see him do this, but Peter
liked it. It was so exciting.
The Russian gentleman was so delighted with
the strawberries that the three racked their
brains to find some other surprise for him.
But all the racking did not bring out any
idea more novel than wild cherries. And this
idea occurred to them next morning. They had
seen the blossom on the trees in the spring,
and they knew where to look for wild cherries
now that cherry time was here. The trees grew
all up and along the rocky face of the cliff
out of which the mouth of the tunnel opened.
There were all sorts of trees there, birches
and beeches and baby oaks and hazels, and
among them the cherry blossom had shone like
snow and silver.
The mouth of the tunnel was some way from
Three Chimneys, so Mother let them take their
lunch with them in a basket. And the basket
would do to bring the cherries back in if
they found any. She also lent them her silver
watch so that they should not be late for
tea. Peter’s Waterbury had taken it into
its head not to go since the day when Peter
dropped it into the water-butt. And they started.
When they got to the top of the cutting, they
leaned over the fence and looked down to where
the railway lines lay at the bottom of what,
as Phyllis said, was exactly like a mountain
gorge.
“If it wasn’t for the railway at the bottom,
it would be as though the foot of man had
never been there, wouldn’t it?”
The sides of the cutting were of grey stone,
very roughly hewn. Indeed, the top part of
the cutting had been a little natural glen
that had been cut deeper to bring it down
to the level of the tunnel’s mouth. Among
the rocks, grass and flowers grew, and seeds
dropped by birds in the crannies of the stone
had taken root and grown into bushes and trees
that overhung the cutting. Near the tunnel
was a flight of steps leading down to the
line—just wooden bars roughly fixed into
the earth—a very steep and narrow way, more
like a ladder than a stair.
“We’d better get down,” said Peter;
“I’m sure the cherries would be quite
easy to get at from the side of the steps.
You remember it was there we picked the cherry
blossoms that we put on the rabbit’s grave.”
So they went along the fence towards the little
swing gate that is at the top of these steps.
And they were almost at the gate when Bobbie
said:—
“Hush. Stop! What’s that?”
“That” was a very odd noise indeed—a
soft noise, but quite plainly to be heard
through the sound of the wind in tree branches,
and the hum and whir of the telegraph wires.
It was a sort of rustling, whispering sound.
As they listened it stopped, and then it began
again.
And this time it did not stop, but it grew
louder and more rustling and rumbling.
“Look”—cried Peter, suddenly—“the
tree over there!”
The tree he pointed at was one of those that
have rough grey leaves and white flowers.
The berries, when they come, are bright scarlet,
but if you pick them, they disappoint you
by turning black before you get them home.
And, as Peter pointed, the tree was moving—not
just the way trees ought to move when the
wind blows through them, but all in one piece,
as though it were a live creature and were
walking down the side of the cutting.
“It’s moving!” cried Bobbie. “Oh,
look! and so are the others. It’s like the
woods in Macbeth.”
“It’s magic,” said Phyllis, breathlessly.
“I always knew this railway was enchanted.”
It really did seem a little like magic. For
all the trees for about twenty yards of the
opposite bank seemed to be slowly walking
down towards the railway line, the tree with
the grey leaves bringing up the rear like
some old shepherd driving a flock of green
sheep.
“What is it? Oh, what is it?” said Phyllis;
“it’s much too magic for me. I don’t
like it. Let’s go home.”
But Bobbie and Peter clung fast to the rail
and watched breathlessly. And Phyllis made
no movement towards going home by herself.
The trees moved on and on. Some stones and
loose earth fell down and rattled on the railway
metals far below.
“It’s ALL coming down,” Peter tried
to say, but he found there was hardly any
voice to say it with. And, indeed, just as
he spoke, the great rock, on the top of which
the walking trees were, leaned slowly forward.
The trees, ceasing to walk, stood still and
shivered. Leaning with the rock, they seemed
to hesitate a moment, and then rock and trees
and grass and bushes, with a rushing sound,
slipped right away from the face of the cutting
and fell on the line with a blundering crash
that could have been heard half a mile off.
A cloud of dust rose up.
“Oh,” said Peter, in awestruck tones,
“isn’t it exactly like when coals come
in?—if there wasn’t any roof to the cellar
and you could see down.”
“Look what a great mound it’s made!”
said Bobbie.
“Yes,” said Peter, slowly. He was still
leaning on the fence. “Yes,” he said again,
still more slowly.
Then he stood upright.
“The 11.29 down hasn’t gone by yet. We
must let them know at the station, or there’ll
be a most frightful accident.”
“Let’s run,” said Bobbie, and began.
But Peter cried, “Come back!” and looked
at Mother’s watch. He was very prompt and
businesslike, and his face looked whiter than
they had ever seen it.
“No time,” he said; “it’s two miles
away, and it’s past eleven.”
“Couldn’t we,” suggested Phyllis, breathlessly,
“couldn’t we climb up a telegraph post
and do something to the wires?”
“We don’t know how,” said Peter.
“They do it in war,” said Phyllis; “I
know I’ve heard of it.”
“They only CUT them, silly,” said Peter,
“and that doesn’t do any good. And we
couldn’t cut them even if we got up, and
we couldn’t get up. If we had anything red,
we could get down on the line and wave it.”
“But the train wouldn’t see us till it
got round the corner, and then it could see
the mound just as well as us,” said Phyllis;
“better, because it’s much bigger than
us.”
“If we only had something red,” Peter
repeated, “we could go round the corner
and wave to the train.”
“We might wave, anyway.”
“They’d only think it was just US, as
usual. We’ve waved so often before. Anyway,
let’s get down.”
They got down the steep stairs. Bobbie was
pale and shivering. Peter’s face looked
thinner than usual. Phyllis was red-faced
and damp with anxiety.
“Oh, how hot I am!” she said; “and I
thought it was going to be cold; I wish we
hadn’t put on our—” she stopped short,
and then ended in quite a different tone—“our
flannel petticoats.”
Bobbie turned at the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh, yes,” she cried; “THEY’RE red!
Let’s take them off.”
They did, and with the petticoats rolled up
under their arms, ran along the railway, skirting
the newly fallen mound of stones and rock
and earth, and bent, crushed, twisted trees.
They ran at their best pace. Peter led, but
the girls were not far behind. They reached
the corner that hid the mound from the straight
line of railway that ran half a mile without
curve or corner.
“Now,” said Peter, taking hold of the
largest flannel petticoat.
“You’re not”—Phyllis faltered—“you’re
not going to TEAR them?”
“Shut up,” said Peter, with brief sternness.
“Oh, yes,” said Bobbie, “tear them into
little bits if you like. Don’t you see,
Phil, if we can’t stop the train, there’ll
be a real live accident, with people KILLED.
Oh, horrible! Here, Peter, you’ll never
tear it through the band!”
She took the red flannel petticoat from him
and tore it off an inch from the band. Then
she tore the other in the same way.
“There!” said Peter, tearing in his turn.
He divided each petticoat into three pieces.
“Now, we’ve got six flags.” He looked
at the watch again. “And we’ve got seven
minutes. We must have flagstaffs.”
The knives given to boys are, for some odd
reason, seldom of the kind of steel that keeps
sharp. The young saplings had to be broken
off. Two came up by the roots. The leaves
were stripped from them.
“We must cut holes in the flags, and run
the sticks through the holes,” said Peter.
And the holes were cut. The knife was sharp
enough to cut flannel with. Two of the flags
were set up in heaps of loose stones between
the sleepers of the down line. Then Phyllis
and Roberta took each a flag, and stood ready
to wave it as soon as the train came in sight.
“I shall have the other two myself,” said
Peter, “because it was my idea to wave something
red.”
“They’re our petticoats, though,” Phyllis
was beginning, but Bobbie interrupted—
“Oh, what does it matter who waves what,
if we can only save the train?”
Perhaps Peter had not rightly calculated the
number of minutes it would take the 11.29
to get from the station to the place where
they were, or perhaps the train was late.
Anyway, it seemed a very long time that they
waited.
Phyllis grew impatient. “I expect the watch
is wrong, and the train’s gone by,” said
she.
Peter relaxed the heroic attitude he had chosen
to show off his two flags. And Bobbie began
to feel sick with suspense.
It seemed to her that they had been standing
there for hours and hours, holding those silly
little red flannel flags that no one would
ever notice. The train wouldn’t care. It
would go rushing by them and tear round the
corner and go crashing into that awful mound.
And everyone would be killed. Her hands grew
very cold and trembled so that she could hardly
hold the flag. And then came the distant rumble
and hum of the metals, and a puff of white
steam showed far away along the stretch of
line.
“Stand firm,” said Peter, “and wave
like mad! When it gets to that big furze bush
step back, but go on waving! Don’t stand
ON the line, Bobbie!”
The train came rattling along very, very fast.
“They don’t see us! They won’t see us!
It’s all no good!” cried Bobbie.
The two little flags on the line swayed as
the nearing train shook and loosened the heaps
of loose stones that held them up. One of
them slowly leaned over and fell on the line.
Bobbie jumped forward and caught it up, and
waved it; her hands did not tremble now.
It seemed that the train came on as fast as
ever. It was very near now.
“Keep off the line, you silly cuckoo!”
said Peter, fiercely.
“It’s no good,” Bobbie said again.
“Stand back!” cried Peter, suddenly, and
he dragged Phyllis back by the arm.
But Bobbie cried, “Not yet, not yet!”
and waved her two flags right over the line.
The front of the engine looked black and enormous.
Its voice was loud and harsh.
“Oh, stop, stop, stop!” cried Bobbie.
No one heard her. At least Peter and Phyllis
didn’t, for the oncoming rush of the train
covered the sound of her voice with a mountain
of sound. But afterwards she used to wonder
whether the engine itself had not heard her.
It seemed almost as though it had—for it
slackened swiftly, slackened and stopped,
not twenty yards from the place where Bobbie’s
two flags waved over the line. She saw the
great black engine stop dead, but somehow
she could not stop waving the flags. And when
the driver and the fireman had got off the
engine and Peter and Phyllis had gone to meet
them and pour out their excited tale of the
awful mound just round the corner, Bobbie
still waved the flags but more and more feebly
and jerkily.
When the others turned towards her she was
lying across the line with her hands flung
forward and still gripping the sticks of the
little red flannel flags.
The engine-driver picked her up, carried her
to the train, and laid her on the cushions
of a first-class carriage.
“Gone right off in a faint,” he said,
“poor little woman. And no wonder. I’ll
just ‘ave a look at this ‘ere mound of
yours, and then we’ll run you back to the
station and get her seen to.”
It was horrible to see Bobbie lying so white
and quiet, with her lips blue, and parted.
“I believe that’s what people look like
when they’re dead,” whispered Phyllis.
“DON’T!” said Peter, sharply.
They sat by Bobbie on the blue cushions, and
the train ran back. Before it reached their
station Bobbie had sighed and opened her eyes,
and rolled herself over and begun to cry.
This cheered the others wonderfully. They
had seen her cry before, but they had never
seen her faint, nor anyone else, for the matter
of that. They had not known what to do when
she was fainting, but now she was only crying
they could thump her on the back and tell
her not to, just as they always did. And presently,
when she stopped crying, they were able to
laugh at her for being such a coward as to
faint.
When the station was reached, the three were
the heroes of an agitated meeting on the platform.
The praises they got for their “prompt action,”
their “common sense,” their “ingenuity,”
were enough to have turned anybody’s head.
Phyllis enjoyed herself thoroughly. She had
never been a real heroine before, and the
feeling was delicious. Peter’s ears got
very red. Yet he, too, enjoyed himself. Only
Bobbie wished they all wouldn’t. She wanted
to get away.
“You’ll hear from the Company about this,
I expect,” said the Station Master.
Bobbie wished she might never hear of it again.
She pulled at Peter’s jacket.
“Oh, come away, come away! I want to go
home,” she said.
So they went. And as they went Station Master
and Porter and guards and driver and fireman
and passengers sent up a cheer.
“Oh, listen,” cried Phyllis; “that’s
for US!”
“Yes,” said Peter. “I say, I am glad
I thought about something red, and waving
it.”
“How lucky we DID put on our red flannel
petticoats!” said Phyllis.
Bobbie said nothing. She was thinking of the
horrible mound, and the trustful train rushing
towards it.
“And it was US that saved them,” said
Peter.
“How dreadful if they had all been killed!”
said Phyllis; “wouldn’t it, Bobbie?”
“We never got any cherries, after all,”
said Bobbie.
The others thought her rather heartless.
Chapter VII. For valour.
I hope you don’t mind my telling you a good
deal about Roberta. The fact is I am growing
very fond of her. The more I observe her the
more I love her. And I notice all sorts of
things about her that I like.
For instance, she was quite oddly anxious
to make other people happy. And she could
keep a secret, a tolerably rare accomplishment.
Also she had the power of silent sympathy.
That sounds rather dull, I know, but it’s
not so dull as it sounds. It just means that
a person is able to know that you are unhappy,
and to love you extra on that account, without
bothering you by telling you all the time
how sorry she is for you. That was what Bobbie
was like. She knew that Mother was unhappy—and
that Mother had not told her the reason. So
she just loved Mother more and never said
a single word that could let Mother know how
earnestly her little girl wondered what Mother
was unhappy about. This needs practice. It
is not so easy as you might think.
Whatever happened—and all sorts of nice,
pleasant ordinary things happened—such as
picnics, games, and buns for tea, Bobbie always
had these thoughts at the back of her mind.
“Mother’s unhappy. Why? I don’t know.
She doesn’t want me to know. I won’t try
to find out. But she IS unhappy. Why? I don’t
know. She doesn’t—” and so on, repeating
and repeating like a tune that you don’t
know the stopping part of.
The Russian gentleman still took up a good
deal of everybody’s thoughts. All the editors
and secretaries of Societies and Members of
Parliament had answered Mother’s letters
as politely as they knew how; but none of
them could tell where the wife and children
of Mr. Szezcpansky would be likely to be.
(Did I tell you that the Russian’s very
Russian name was that?)
Bobbie had another quality which you will
hear differently described by different people.
Some of them call it interfering in other
people’s business—and some call it “helping
lame dogs over stiles,” and some call it
“loving-kindness.” It just means trying
to help people.
She racked her brains to think of some way
of helping the Russian gentleman to find his
wife and children. He had learned a few words
of English now. He could say “Good morning,”
and “Good night,” and “Please,” and
“Thank you,” and “Pretty,” when the
children brought him flowers, and “Ver’
good,” when they asked him how he had slept.
The way he smiled when he “said his English,”
was, Bobbie felt, “just too sweet for anything.”
She used to think of his face because she
fancied it would help her to some way of helping
him. But it did not. Yet his being there cheered
her because she saw that it made Mother happier.
“She likes to have someone to be good to,
even beside us,” said Bobbie. “And I know
she hated to let him have Father’s clothes.
But I suppose it ‘hurt nice,’ or she wouldn’t
have.”
For many and many a night after the day when
she and Peter and Phyllis had saved the train
from wreck by waving their little red flannel
flags, Bobbie used to wake screaming and shivering,
seeing again that horrible mound, and the
poor, dear trustful engine rushing on towards
it—just thinking that it was doing its swift
duty, and that everything was clear and safe.
And then a warm thrill of pleasure used to
run through her at the remembrance of how
she and Peter and Phyllis and the red flannel
petticoats had really saved everybody.
One morning a letter came. It was addressed
to Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis. They opened
it with enthusiastic curiosity, for they did
not often get letters.
The letter said:—
“Dear Sir, and Ladies,—It is proposed
to make a small presentation to you, in commemoration
of your prompt and courageous action in warning
the train on the —- inst., and thus averting
what must, humanly speaking, have been a terrible
accident. The presentation will take place
at the —- Station at three o’clock on
the 30th inst., if this time and place will
be convenient to you.
“Yours faithfully,
“Jabez Inglewood.
“Secretary, Great Northern and Southern
Railway Co.”
There never had been a prouder moment in the
lives of the three children. They rushed to
Mother with the letter, and she also felt
proud and said so, and this made the children
happier than ever.
“But if the presentation is money, you must
say, ‘Thank you, but we’d rather not take
it,’” said Mother. “I’ll wash your
Indian muslins at once,” she added. “You
must look tidy on an occasion like this.”
“Phil and I can wash them,” said Bobbie,
“if you’ll iron them, Mother.”
Washing is rather fun. I wonder whether you’ve
ever done it? This particular washing took
place in the back kitchen, which had a stone
floor and a very big stone sink under its
window.
“Let’s put the bath on the sink,” said
Phyllis; “then we can pretend we’re out-of-doors
washerwomen like Mother saw in France.”
“But they were washing in the cold river,”
said Peter, his hands in his pockets, “not
in hot water.”
“This is a HOT river, then,” said Phyllis;
“lend a hand with the bath, there’s a
dear.”
“I should like to see a deer lending a hand,”
said Peter, but he lent his.
“Now to rub and scrub and scrub and rub,”
said Phyllis, hopping joyously about as Bobbie
carefully carried the heavy kettle from the
kitchen fire.
“Oh, no!” said Bobbie, greatly shocked;
“you don’t rub muslin. You put the boiled
soap in the hot water and make it all frothy-lathery—and
then you shake the muslin and squeeze it,
ever so gently, and all the dirt comes out.
It’s only clumsy things like tablecloths
and sheets that have to be rubbed.”
The lilac and the Gloire de Dijon roses outside
the window swayed in the soft breeze.
“It’s a nice drying day—that’s one
thing,” said Bobbie, feeling very grown
up. “Oh, I do wonder what wonderful feelings
we shall have when we WEAR the Indian muslin
dresses!”
“Yes, so do I,” said Phyllis, shaking
and squeezing the muslin in quite a professional
manner.
“NOW we squeeze out the soapy water. NO—we
mustn’t twist them—and then rinse them.
I’ll hold them while you and Peter empty
the bath and get clean water.”
“A presentation! That means presents,”
said Peter, as his sisters, having duly washed
the pegs and wiped the line, hung up the dresses
to dry. “Whatever will it be?”
“It might be anything,” said Phyllis;
“what I’ve always wanted is a Baby elephant—but
I suppose they wouldn’t know that.”
“Suppose it was gold models of steam-engines?”
said Bobbie.
“Or a big model of the scene of the prevented
accident,” suggested Peter, “with a little
model train, and dolls dressed like us and
the engine-driver and fireman and passengers.”
“Do you LIKE,” said Bobbie, doubtfully,
drying her hands on the rough towel that hung
on a roller at the back of the scullery door,
“do you LIKE us being rewarded for saving
a train?”
“Yes, I do,” said Peter, downrightly;
“and don’t you try to come it over us
that you don’t like it, too. Because I know
you do.”
“Yes,” said Bobbie, doubtfully, “I know
I do. But oughtn’t we to be satisfied with
just having done it, and not ask for anything
more?”
“Who did ask for anything more, silly?”
said her brother; “Victoria Cross soldiers
don’t ASK for it; but they’re glad enough
to get it all the same. Perhaps it’ll be
medals. Then, when I’m very old indeed,
I shall show them to my grandchildren and
say, ‘We only did our duty,’ and they’ll
be awfully proud of me.”
“You have to be married,” warned Phyllis,
“or you don’t have any grandchildren.”
“I suppose I shall HAVE to be married some
day,” said Peter, “but it will be an awful
bother having her round all the time. I’d
like to marry a lady who had trances, and
only woke up once or twice a year.”
“Just to say you were the light of her life
and then go to sleep again. Yes. That wouldn’t
be bad,” said Bobbie.
“When I get married,” said Phyllis, “I
shall want him to want me to be awake all
the time, so that I can hear him say how nice
I am.”
“I think it would be nice,” said Bobbie,
“to marry someone very poor, and then you’d
do all the work and he’d love you most frightfully,
and see the blue wood smoke curling up among
the trees from the domestic hearth as he came
home from work every night. I say—we’ve
got to answer that letter and say that the
time and place WILL be convenient to us. There’s
the soap, Peter. WE’RE both as clean as
clean. That pink box of writing paper you
had on your birthday, Phil.”
It took some time to arrange what should be
said. Mother had gone back to her writing,
and several sheets of pink paper with scalloped
gilt edges and green four-leaved shamrocks
in the corner were spoiled before the three
had decided what to say. Then each made a
copy and signed it with its own name.
The threefold letter ran:—
“Dear Mr. Jabez Inglewood,—Thank you very
much. We did not want to be rewarded but only
to save the train, but we are glad you think
so and thank you very much. The time and place
you say will be quite convenient to us. Thank
you very much.
“Your affecate little friend,”
Then came the name, and after it:—
“P.S. Thank you very much.”
“Washing is much easier than ironing,”
said Bobbie, taking the clean dry dresses
off the line. “I do love to see things come
clean. Oh—I don’t know how we shall wait
till it’s time to know what presentation
they’re going to present!”
When at last—it seemed a very long time
after—it was THE day, the three children
went down to the station at the proper time.
And everything that happened was so odd that
it seemed like a dream. The Station Master
came out to meet them—in his best clothes,
as Peter noticed at once—and led them into
the waiting room where once they had played
the advertisement game. It looked quite different
now. A carpet had been put down—and there
were pots of roses on the mantelpiece and
on the window ledges—green branches stuck
up, like holly and laurel are at Christmas,
over the framed advertisement of Cook’s
Tours and the Beauties of Devon and the Paris
Lyons Railway. There were quite a number of
people there besides the Porter—two or three
ladies in smart dresses, and quite a crowd
of gentlemen in high hats and frock coats—besides
everybody who belonged to the station. They
recognized several people who had been in
the train on the red-flannel-petticoat day.
Best of all their own old gentleman was there,
and his coat and hat and collar seemed more
than ever different from anyone else’s.
He shook hands with them and then everybody
sat down on chairs, and a gentleman in spectacles—they
found out afterwards that he was the District
Superintendent—began quite a long speech—very
clever indeed. I am not going to write the
speech down. First, because you would think
it dull; and secondly, because it made all
the children blush so, and get so hot about
the ears that I am quite anxious to get away
from this part of the subject; and thirdly,
because the gentleman took so many words to
say what he had to say that I really haven’t
time to write them down. He said all sorts
of nice things about the children’s bravery
and presence of mind, and when he had done
he sat down, and everyone who was there clapped
and said, “Hear, hear.”
And then the old gentleman got up and said
things, too. It was very like a prize-giving.
And then he called the children one by one,
by their names, and gave each of them a beautiful
gold watch and chain. And inside the watches
were engraved after the name of the watch’s
new owner:—
“From the Directors of the Northern and
Southern Railway in grateful recognition of
the courageous and prompt action which averted
an accident on —- 1905.”
The watches were the most beautiful you can
possibly imagine, and each one had a blue
leather case to live in when it was at home.
“You must make a speech now and thank everyone
for their kindness,” whispered the Station
Master in Peter’s ear and pushed him forward.
“Begin ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’” he
added.
Each of the children had already said “Thank
you,” quite properly.
“Oh, dear,” said Peter, but he did not
resist the push.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said in a rather
husky voice. Then there was a pause, and he
heard his heart beating in his throat. “Ladies
and Gentlemen,” he went on with a rush,
“it’s most awfully good of you, and we
shall treasure the watches all our lives—but
really we don’t deserve it because what
we did wasn’t anything, really. At least,
I mean it was awfully exciting, and what I
mean to say—thank you all very, very much.”
The people clapped Peter more than they had
done the District Superintendent, and then
everybody shook hands with them, and as soon
as politeness would let them, they got away,
and tore up the hill to Three Chimneys with
their watches in their hands.
It was a wonderful day—the kind of day that
very seldom happens to anybody and to most
of us not at all.
“I did want to talk to the old gentleman
about something else,” said Bobbie, “but
it was so public—like being in church.”
“What did you want to say?” asked Phyllis.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve thought about
it more,” said Bobbie.
So when she had thought a little more she
wrote a letter.
“My dearest old gentleman,” it said; “I
want most awfully to ask you something. If
you could get out of the train and go by the
next, it would do. I do not want you to give
me anything. Mother says we ought not to.
And besides, we do not want any THINGS. Only
to talk to you about a Prisoner and Captive.
Your loving little friend,
“Bobbie.”
She got the Station Master to give the letter
to the old gentleman, and next day she asked
Peter and Phyllis to come down to the station
with her at the time when the train that brought
the old gentleman from town would be passing
through.
She explained her idea to them—and they
approved thoroughly.
They had all washed their hands and faces,
and brushed their hair, and were looking as
tidy as they knew how. But Phyllis, always
unlucky, had upset a jug of lemonade down
the front of her dress. There was no time
to change—and the wind happening to blow
from the coal yard, her frock was soon powdered
with grey, which stuck to the sticky lemonade
stains and made her look, as Peter said, “like
any little gutter child.”
It was decided that she should keep behind
the others as much as possible.
“Perhaps the old gentleman won’t notice,”
said Bobbie. “The aged are often weak in
the eyes.”
There was no sign of weakness, however, in
the eyes, or in any other part of the old
gentleman, as he stepped from the train and
looked up and down the platform.
The three children, now that it came to the
point, suddenly felt that rush of deep shyness
which makes your ears red and hot, your hands
warm and wet, and the tip of your nose pink
and shiny.
“Oh,” said Phyllis, “my heart’s thumping
like a steam-engine—right under my sash,
too.”
“Nonsense,” said Peter, “people’s
hearts aren’t under their sashes.”
“I don’t care—mine is,” said Phyllis.
“If you’re going to talk like a poetry-book,”
said Peter, “my heart’s in my mouth.”
“My heart’s in my boots—if you come
to that,” said Roberta; “but do come on—he’ll
think we’re idiots.”
“He won’t be far wrong,” said Peter,
gloomily. And they went forward to meet the
old gentleman.
“Hullo,” he said, shaking hands with them
all in turn. “This is a very great pleasure.”
“It WAS good of you to get out,” Bobbie
said, perspiring and polite.
He took her arm and drew her into the waiting
room where she and the others had played the
advertisement game the day they found the
Russian. Phyllis and Peter followed. “Well?”
said the old gentleman, giving Bobbie’s
arm a kind little shake before he let it go.
“Well? What is it?”
“Oh, please!” said Bobbie.
“Yes?” said the old gentleman.
“What I mean to say—” said Bobbie.
“Well?” said the old gentleman.
“It’s all very nice and kind,” said
she.
“But?” he said.
“I wish I might say something,” she said.
“Say it,” said he.
“Well, then,” said Bobbie—and out came
the story of the Russian who had written the
beautiful book about poor people, and had
been sent to prison and to Siberia for just
that.
“And what we want more than anything in
the world is to find his wife and children
for him,” said Bobbie, “but we don’t
know how. But you must be most horribly clever,
or you wouldn’t be a Direction of the Railway.
And if YOU knew how—and would? We’d rather
have that than anything else in the world.
We’d go without the watches, even, if you
could sell them and find his wife with the
money.”
And the others said so, too, though not with
so much enthusiasm.
“Hum,” said the old gentleman, pulling
down the white waistcoat that had the big
gilt buttons on it, “what did you say the
name was—Fryingpansky?”
“No, no,” said Bobbie earnestly. “I’ll
write it down for you. It doesn’t really
look at all like that except when you say
it. Have you a bit of pencil and the back
of an envelope?” she asked.
The old gentleman got out a gold pencil-case
and a beautiful, sweet-smelling, green Russian
leather note-book and opened it at a new page.
“Here,” he said, “write here.”
She wrote down “Szezcpansky,” and said:—
“That’s how you write it. You CALL it
Shepansky.”
The old gentleman took out a pair of gold-rimmed
spectacles and fitted them on his nose. When
he had read the name, he looked quite different.
“THAT man? Bless my soul!” he said. “Why,
I’ve read his book! It’s translated into
every European language. A fine book—a noble
book. And so your mother took him in—like
the good Samaritan. Well, well. I’ll tell
you what, youngsters—your mother must be
a very good woman.”
“Of course she is,” said Phyllis, in astonishment.
“And you’re a very good man,” said Bobbie,
very shy, but firmly resolved to be polite.
“You flatter me,” said the old gentleman,
taking off his hat with a flourish. “And
now am I to tell you what I think of you?”
“Oh, please don’t,” said Bobbie, hastily.
“Why?” asked the old gentleman.
“I don’t exactly know,” said Bobbie.
“Only—if it’s horrid, I don’t want
you to; and if it’s nice, I’d rather you
didn’t.”
The old gentleman laughed.
“Well, then,” he said, “I’ll only
just say that I’m very glad you came to
me about this—very glad, indeed. And I shouldn’t
be surprised if I found out something very
soon. I know a great many Russians in London,
and every Russian knows HIS name. Now tell
me all about yourselves.”
He turned to the others, but there was only
one other, and that was Peter. Phyllis had
disappeared.
“Tell me all about yourself,” said the
old gentleman again. And, quite naturally,
Peter was stricken dumb.
“All right, we’ll have an examination,”
said the old gentleman; “you two sit on
the table, and I’ll sit on the bench and
ask questions.”
He did, and out came their names and ages—their
Father’s name and business—how long they
had lived at Three Chimneys and a great deal
more.
The questions were beginning to turn on a
herring and a half for three halfpence, and
a pound of lead and a pound of feathers, when
the door of the waiting room was kicked open
by a boot; as the boot entered everyone could
see that its lace was coming undone—and
in came Phyllis, very slowly and carefully.
In one hand she carried a large tin can, and
in the other a thick slice of bread and butter.
“Afternoon tea,” she announced proudly,
and held the can and the bread and butter
out to the old gentleman, who took them and
said:—
“Bless my soul!”
“Yes,” said Phyllis.
“It’s very thoughtful of you,” said
the old gentleman, “very.”
“But you might have got a cup,” said Bobbie,
“and a plate.”
“Perks always drinks out of the can,”
said Phyllis, flushing red. “I think it
was very nice of him to give it me at all—let
alone cups and plates,” she added.
“So do I,” said the old gentleman, and
he drank some of the tea and tasted the bread
and butter.
And then it was time for the next train, and
he got into it with many good-byes and kind
last words.
“Well,” said Peter, when they were left
on the platform, and the tail-lights of the
train disappeared round the corner, “it’s
my belief that we’ve lighted a candle to-day—like
Latimer, you know, when he was being burned—and
there’ll be fireworks for our Russian before
long.”
And so there were.
It wasn’t ten days after the interview in
the waiting room that the three children were
sitting on the top of the biggest rock in
the field below their house watching the 5.15
steam away from the station along the bottom
of the valley. They saw, too, the few people
who had got out at the station straggling
up the road towards the village—and they
saw one person leave the road and open the
gate that led across the fields to Three Chimneys
and to nowhere else.
“Who on earth!” said Peter, scrambling
down.
“Let’s go and see,” said Phyllis.
So they did. And when they got near enough
to see who the person was, they saw it was
their old gentleman himself, his brass buttons
winking in the afternoon sunshine, and his
white waistcoat looking whiter than ever against
the green of the field.
“Hullo!” shouted the children, waving
their hands.
“Hullo!” shouted the old gentleman, waving
his hat.
Then the three started to run—and when they
got to him they hardly had breath left to
say:—
“How do you do?”
“Good news,” said he. “I’ve found
your Russian friend’s wife and child—and
I couldn’t resist the temptation of giving
myself the pleasure of telling him.”
But as he looked at Bobbie’s face he felt
that he COULD resist that temptation.
“Here,” he said to her, “you run on
and tell him. The other two will show me the
way.”
Bobbie ran. But when she had breathlessly
panted out the news to the Russian and Mother
sitting in the quiet garden—when Mother’s
face had lighted up so beautifully, and she
had said half a dozen quick French words to
the Exile—Bobbie wished that she had NOT
carried the news. For the Russian sprang up
with a cry that made Bobbie’s heart leap
and then tremble—a cry of love and longing
such as she had never heard. Then he took
Mother’s hand and kissed it gently and reverently—and
then he sank down in his chair and covered
his face with his hands and sobbed. Bobbie
crept away. She did not want to see the others
just then.
But she was as gay as anybody when the endless
French talking was over, when Peter had torn
down to the village for buns and cakes, and
the girls had got tea ready and taken it out
into the garden.
The old gentleman was most merry and delightful.
He seemed to be able to talk in French and
English almost at the same moment, and Mother
did nearly as well. It was a delightful time.
Mother seemed as if she could not make enough
fuss about the old gentleman, and she said
yes at once when he asked if he might present
some “goodies” to his little friends.
The word was new to the children—but they
guessed that it meant sweets, for the three
large pink and green boxes, tied with green
ribbon, which he took out of his bag, held
unheard-of layers of beautiful chocolates.
The Russian’s few belongings were packed,
and they all saw him off at the station.
Then Mother turned to the old gentleman and
said:—
“I don’t know how to thank you for EVERYTHING.
It has been a real pleasure to me to see you.
But we live very quietly. I am so sorry that
I can’t ask you to come and see us again.”
The children thought this very hard. When
they HAD made a friend—and such a friend—they
would dearly have liked him to come and see
them again.
What the old gentleman thought they couldn’t
tell. He only said:—
“I consider myself very fortunate, Madam,
to have been received once at your house.”
“Ah,” said Mother, “I know I must seem
surly and ungrateful—but—”
“You could never seem anything but a most
charming and gracious lady,” said the old
gentleman, with another of his bows.
And as they turned to go up the hill, Bobbie
saw her Mother’s face.
“How tired you look, Mammy,” she said;
“lean on me.”
“It’s my place to give Mother my arm,”
said Peter. “I’m the head man of the family
when Father’s away.”
Mother took an arm of each.
“How awfully nice,” said Phyllis, skipping
joyfully, “to think of the dear Russian
embracing his long-lost wife. The baby must
have grown a lot since he saw it.”
“Yes,” said Mother.
“I wonder whether Father will think I’VE
grown,” Phyllis went on, skipping still
more gaily. “I have grown already, haven’t
I, Mother?”
“Yes,” said Mother, “oh, yes,” and
Bobbie and Peter felt her hands tighten on
their arms.
“Poor old Mammy, you ARE tired,” said
Peter.
Bobbie said, “Come on, Phil; I’ll race
you to the gate.”
And she started the race, though she hated
doing it. YOU know why Bobbie did that. Mother
only thought that Bobbie was tired of walking
slowly. Even Mothers, who love you better
than anyone else ever will, don’t always
understand.
Chapter VIII. The amateur firemen.
“That’s a likely little brooch you’ve
got on, Miss,” said Perks the Porter; “I
don’t know as ever I see a thing more like
a buttercup without it WAS a buttercup.”
“Yes,” said Bobbie, glad and flushed by
this approval. “I always thought it was
more like a buttercup almost than even a real
one—and I NEVER thought it would come to
be mine, my very own—and then Mother gave
it to me for my birthday.”
“Oh, have you had a birthday?” said Perks;
and he seemed quite surprised, as though a
birthday were a thing only granted to a favoured
few.
“Yes,” said Bobbie; “when’s your birthday,
Mr. Perks?” The children were taking tea
with Mr. Perks in the Porters’ room among
the lamps and the railway almanacs. They had
brought their own cups and some jam turnovers.
Mr. Perks made tea in a beer can, as usual,
and everyone felt very happy and confidential.
“My birthday?” said Perks, tipping some
more dark brown tea out of the can into Peter’s
cup. “I give up keeping of my birthday afore
you was born.”
“But you must have been born SOMETIME, you
know,” said Phyllis, thoughtfully, “even
if it was twenty years ago—or thirty or
sixty or seventy.”
“Not so long as that, Missie,” Perks grinned
as he answered. “If you really want to know,
it was thirty-two years ago, come the fifteenth
of this month.”
“Then why don’t you keep it?” asked
Phyllis.
“I’ve got something else to keep besides
birthdays,” said Perks, briefly.
“Oh! What?” asked Phyllis, eagerly. “Not
secrets?”
“No,” said Perks, “the kids and the
Missus.”
It was this talk that set the children thinking,
and, presently, talking. Perks was, on the
whole, the dearest friend they had made. Not
so grand as the Station Master, but more approachable—less
powerful than the old gentleman, but more
confidential.
“It seems horrid that nobody keeps his birthday,”
said Bobbie. “Couldn’t WE do something?”
“Let’s go up to the Canal bridge and talk
it over,” said Peter. “I got a new gut
line from the postman this morning. He gave
it me for a bunch of roses that I gave him
for his sweetheart. She’s ill.”
“Then I do think you might have given her
the roses for nothing,” said Bobbie, indignantly.
“Nyang, nyang!” said Peter, disagreeably,
and put his hands in his pockets.
“He did, of course,” said Phyllis, in
haste; “directly we heard she was ill we
got the roses ready and waited by the gate.
It was when you were making the brekker-toast.
And when he’d said ‘Thank you’ for the
roses so many times—much more than he need
have—he pulled out the line and gave it
to Peter. It wasn’t exchange. It was the
grateful heart.”
“Oh, I BEG your pardon, Peter,” said Bobbie,
“I AM so sorry.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Peter, grandly,
“I knew you would be.”
So then they all went up to the Canal bridge.
The idea was to fish from the bridge, but
the line was not quite long enough.
“Never mind,” said Bobbie. “Let’s
just stay here and look at things. Everything’s
so beautiful.”
It was. The sun was setting in red splendour
over the grey and purple hills, and the canal
lay smooth and shiny in the shadow—no ripple
broke its surface. It was like a grey satin
ribbon between the dusky green silk of the
meadows that were on each side of its banks.
“It’s all right,” said Peter, “but
somehow I can always see how pretty things
are much better when I’ve something to do.
Let’s get down on to the towpath and fish
from there.”
Phyllis and Bobbie remembered how the boys
on the canal-boats had thrown coal at them,
and they said so.
“Oh, nonsense,” said Peter. “There aren’t
any boys here now. If there were, I’d fight
them.”
Peter’s sisters were kind enough not to
remind him how he had NOT fought the boys
when coal had last been thrown. Instead they
said, “All right, then,” and cautiously
climbed down the steep bank to the towing-path.
The line was carefully baited, and for half
an hour they fished patiently and in vain.
Not a single nibble came to nourish hope in
their hearts.
All eyes were intent on the sluggish waters
that earnestly pretended they had never harboured
a single minnow when a loud rough shout made
them start.
“Hi!” said the shout, in most disagreeable
tones, “get out of that, can’t you?”
An old white horse coming along the towing-path
was within half a dozen yards of them. They
sprang to their feet and hastily climbed up
the bank.
“We’ll slip down again when they’ve
gone by,” said Bobbie.
But, alas, the barge, after the manner of
barges, stopped under the bridge.
“She’s going to anchor,” said Peter;
“just our luck!”
The barge did not anchor, because an anchor
is not part of a canal-boat’s furniture,
but she was moored with ropes fore and aft—and
the ropes were made fast to the palings and
to crowbars driven into the ground.
“What you staring at?” growled the Bargee,
crossly.
“We weren’t staring,” said Bobbie; “we
wouldn’t be so rude.”
“Rude be blessed,” said the man; “get
along with you!”
“Get along yourself,” said Peter. He remembered
what he had said about fighting boys, and,
besides, he felt safe halfway up the bank.
“We’ve as much right here as anyone else.”
“Oh, ‘AVE you, indeed!” said the man.
“We’ll soon see about that.” And he
came across his deck and began to climb down
the side of his barge.
“Oh, come away, Peter, come away!” said
Bobbie and Phyllis, in agonised unison.
“Not me,” said Peter, “but YOU’D better.”
The girls climbed to the top of the bank and
stood ready to bolt for home as soon as they
saw their brother out of danger. The way home
lay all down hill. They knew that they all
ran well. The Bargee did not look as if HE
did. He was red-faced, heavy, and beefy.
But as soon as his foot was on the towing-path
the children saw that they had misjudged him.
He made one spring up the bank and caught
Peter by the leg, dragged him down—set him
on his feet with a shake—took him by the
ear—and said sternly:—
“Now, then, what do you mean by it? Don’t
you know these ‘ere waters is preserved?
You ain’t no right catching fish ‘ere—not
to say nothing of your precious cheek.”
Peter was always proud afterwards when he
remembered that, with the Bargee’s furious
fingers tightening on his ear, the Bargee’s
crimson countenance close to his own, the
Bargee’s hot breath on his neck, he had
the courage to speak the truth.
“I WASN’T catching fish,” said Peter.
“That’s not YOUR fault, I’ll be bound,”
said the man, giving Peter’s ear a twist—not
a hard one—but still a twist.
Peter could not say that it was. Bobbie and
Phyllis had been holding on to the railings
above and skipping with anxiety. Now suddenly
Bobbie slipped through the railings and rushed
down the bank towards Peter, so impetuously
that Phyllis, following more temperately,
felt certain that her sister’s descent would
end in the waters of the canal. And so it
would have done if the Bargee hadn’t let
go of Peter’s ear—and caught her in his
jerseyed arm.
“Who are you a-shoving of?” he said, setting
her on her feet.
“Oh,” said Bobbie, breathless, “I’m
not shoving anybody. At least, not on purpose.
Please don’t be cross with Peter. Of course,
if it’s your canal, we’re sorry and we
won’t any more. But we didn’t know it
was yours.”
“Go along with you,” said the Bargee.
“Yes, we will; indeed we will,” said Bobbie,
earnestly; “but we do beg your pardon—and
really we haven’t caught a single fish.
I’d tell you directly if we had, honour
bright I would.”
She held out her hands and Phyllis turned
out her little empty pocket to show that really
they hadn’t any fish concealed about them.
“Well,” said the Bargee, more gently,
“cut along, then, and don’t you do it
again, that’s all.”
The children hurried up the bank.
“Chuck us a coat, M’ria,” shouted the
man. And a red-haired woman in a green plaid
shawl came out from the cabin door with a
baby in her arms and threw a coat to him.
He put it on, climbed the bank, and slouched
along across the bridge towards the village.
“You’ll find me up at the ‘Rose and
Crown’ when you’ve got the kid to sleep,”
he called to her from the bridge.
When he was out of sight the children slowly
returned. Peter insisted on this.
“The canal may belong to him,” he said,
“though I don’t believe it does. But the
bridge is everybody’s. Doctor Forrest told
me it’s public property. I’m not going
to be bounced off the bridge by him or anyone
else, so I tell you.”
Peter’s ear was still sore and so were his
feelings.
The girls followed him as gallant soldiers
might follow the leader of a forlorn hope.
“I do wish you wouldn’t,” was all they
said.
“Go home if you’re afraid,” said Peter;
“leave me alone. I’M not afraid.”
The sound of the man’s footsteps died away
along the quiet road. The peace of the evening
was not broken by the notes of the sedge-warblers
or by the voice of the woman in the barge,
singing her baby to sleep. It was a sad song
she sang. Something about Bill Bailey and
how she wanted him to come home.
The children stood leaning their arms on the
parapet of the bridge; they were glad to be
quiet for a few minutes because all three
hearts were beating much more quickly.
“I’m not going to be driven away by any
old bargeman, I’m not,” said Peter, thickly.
“Of course not,” Phyllis said soothingly;
“you didn’t give in to him! So now we
might go home, don’t you think?”
“NO,” said Peter.
Nothing more was said till the woman got off
the barge, climbed the bank, and came across
the bridge.
She hesitated, looking at the three backs
of the children, then she said, “Ahem.”
Peter stayed as he was, but the girls looked
round.
“You mustn’t take no notice of my Bill,”
said the woman; “‘is bark’s worse’n
‘is bite. Some of the kids down Farley way
is fair terrors. It was them put ‘is back
up calling out about who ate the puppy-pie
under Marlow bridge.”
“Who DID?” asked Phyllis.
“I dunno,” said the woman. “Nobody don’t
know! But somehow, and I don’t know the
why nor the wherefore of it, them words is
p’ison to a barge-master. Don’t you take
no notice. ‘E won’t be back for two hours
good. You might catch a power o’ fish afore
that. The light’s good an’ all,” she
added.
“Thank you,” said Bobbie. “You’re
very kind. Where’s your baby?”
“Asleep in the cabin,” said the woman.
“‘E’s all right. Never wakes afore twelve.
Reg’lar as a church clock, ‘e is.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bobbie; “I would
have liked to see him, close to.”
“And a finer you never did see, Miss, though
I says it.” The woman’s face brightened
as she spoke.
“Aren’t you afraid to leave it?” said
Peter.
“Lor’ love you, no,” said the woman;
“who’d hurt a little thing like ‘im?
Besides, Spot’s there. So long!”
The woman went away.
“Shall we go home?” said Phyllis.
“You can. I’m going to fish,” said Peter
briefly.
“I thought we came up here to talk about
Perks’s birthday,” said Phyllis.
“Perks’s birthday’ll keep.”
So they got down on the towing-path again
and Peter fished. He did not catch anything.
It was almost quite dark, the girls were getting
tired, and as Bobbie said, it was past bedtime,
when suddenly Phyllis cried, “What’s that?”
And she pointed to the canal boat. Smoke was
coming from the chimney of the cabin, had
indeed been curling softly into the soft evening
air all the time—but now other wreaths of
smoke were rising, and these were from the
cabin door.
“It’s on fire—that’s all,” said
Peter, calmly. “Serve him right.”
“Oh—how CAN you?” cried Phyllis. “Think
of the poor dear dog.”
“The BABY!” screamed Bobbie.
In an instant all three made for the barge.
Her mooring ropes were slack, and the little
breeze, hardly strong enough to be felt, had
yet been strong enough to drift her stern
against the bank. Bobbie was first—then
came Peter, and it was Peter who slipped and
fell. He went into the canal up to his neck,
and his feet could not feel the bottom, but
his arm was on the edge of the barge. Phyllis
caught at his hair. It hurt, but it helped
him to get out. Next minute he had leaped
on to the barge, Phyllis following.
“Not you!” he shouted to Bobbie; “ME,
because I’m wet.”
He caught up with Bobbie at the cabin door,
and flung her aside very roughly indeed; if
they had been playing, such roughness would
have made Bobbie weep with tears of rage and
pain. Now, though he flung her on to the edge
of the hold, so that her knee and her elbow
were grazed and bruised, she only cried:—
“No—not you—ME,” and struggled up
again. But not quickly enough.
Peter had already gone down two of the cabin
steps into the cloud of thick smoke. He stopped,
remembered all he had ever heard of fires,
pulled his soaked handkerchief out of his
breast pocket and tied it over his mouth.
As he pulled it out he said:—
“It’s all right, hardly any fire at all.”
And this, though he thought it was a lie,
was rather good of Peter. It was meant to
keep Bobbie from rushing after him into danger.
Of course it didn’t.
The cabin glowed red. A paraffin lamp was
burning calmly in an orange mist.
“Hi,” said Peter, lifting the handkerchief
from his mouth for a moment. “Hi, Baby—where
are you?” He choked.
“Oh, let ME go,” cried Bobbie, close behind
him. Peter pushed her back more roughly than
before, and went on.
Now what would have happened if the baby hadn’t
cried I don’t know—but just at that moment
it DID cry. Peter felt his way through the
dark smoke, found something small and soft
and warm and alive, picked it up and backed
out, nearly tumbling over Bobbie who was close
behind. A dog snapped at his leg—tried to
bark, choked.
“I’ve got the kid,” said Peter, tearing
off the handkerchief and staggering on to
the deck.
Bobbie caught at the place where the bark
came from, and her hands met on the fat back
of a smooth-haired dog. It turned and fastened
its teeth on her hand, but very gently, as
much as to say:—
“I’m bound to bark and bite if strangers
come into my master’s cabin, but I know
you mean well, so I won’t REALLY bite.”
Bobbie dropped the dog.
“All right, old man. Good dog,” said she.
“Here—give me the baby, Peter; you’re
so wet you’ll give it cold.”
Peter was only too glad to hand over the strange
little bundle that squirmed and whimpered
in his arms.
“Now,” said Bobbie, quickly, “you run
straight to the ‘Rose and Crown’ and tell
them. Phil and I will stay here with the precious.
Hush, then, a dear, a duck, a darling! Go
NOW, Peter! Run!”
“I can’t run in these things,” said
Peter, firmly; “they’re as heavy as lead.
I’ll walk.”
“Then I’LL run,” said Bobbie. “Get
on the bank, Phil, and I’ll hand you the
dear.”
The baby was carefully handed. Phyllis sat
down on the bank and tried to hush the baby.
Peter wrung the water from his sleeves and
knickerbocker legs as well as he could, and
it was Bobbie who ran like the wind across
the bridge and up the long white quiet twilight
road towards the ‘Rose and Crown.’
There is a nice old-fashioned room at the
‘Rose and Crown; where Bargees and their
wives sit of an evening drinking their supper
beer, and toasting their supper cheese at
a glowing basketful of coals that sticks out
into the room under a great hooded chimney
and is warmer and prettier and more comforting
than any other fireplace I ever saw.
There was a pleasant party of barge people
round the fire. You might not have thought
it pleasant, but they did; for they were all
friends or acquaintances, and they liked the
same sort of things, and talked the same sort
of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant
society. The Bargee Bill, whom the children
had found so disagreeable, was considered
excellent company by his mates. He was telling
a tale of his own wrongs—always a thrilling
subject. It was his barge he was speaking
about.
“And ‘e sent down word ‘paint her inside
hout,’ not namin’ no colour, d’ye see?
So I gets a lotter green paint and I paints
her stem to stern, and I tell yer she looked
A1. Then ‘E comes along and ‘e says, ‘Wot
yer paint ‘er all one colour for?’ ‘e
says. And I says, says I, ‘Cause I thought
she’d look fust-rate,’ says I, ‘and
I think so still.’ An’ he says, ‘DEW
yer? Then ye can just pay for the bloomin’
paint yerself,’ says he. An’ I ‘ad to,
too.” A murmur of sympathy ran round the
room. Breaking noisily in on it came Bobbie.
She burst open the swing door—crying breathlessly:—
“Bill! I want Bill the Bargeman.”
There was a stupefied silence. Pots of beer
were held in mid-air, paralysed on their way
to thirsty mouths.
“Oh,” said Bobbie, seeing the bargewoman
and making for her. “Your barge cabin’s
on fire. Go quickly.”
The woman started to her feet, and put a big
red hand to her waist, on the left side, where
your heart seems to be when you are frightened
or miserable.
“Reginald Horace!” she cried in a terrible
voice; “my Reginald Horace!”
“All right,” said Bobbie, “if you mean
the baby; got him out safe. Dog, too.” She
had no breath for more, except, “Go on—it’s
all alight.”
Then she sank on the ale-house bench and tried
to get that breath of relief after running
which people call the ‘second wind.’ But
she felt as though she would never breathe
again.
Bill the Bargee rose slowly and heavily. But
his wife was a hundred yards up the road before
he had quite understood what was the matter.
Phyllis, shivering by the canal side, had
hardly heard the quick approaching feet before
the woman had flung herself on the railing,
rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby
from her.
“Don’t,” said Phyllis, reproachfully;
“I’d just got him to sleep.”
* * * * * *
Bill came up later talking in a language with
which the children were wholly unfamiliar.
He leaped on to the barge and dipped up pails
of water. Peter helped him and they put out
the fire. Phyllis, the bargewoman, and the
baby—and presently Bobbie, too—cuddled
together in a heap on the bank.
“Lord help me, if it was me left anything
as could catch alight,” said the woman again
and again.
But it wasn’t she. It was Bill the Bargeman,
who had knocked his pipe out and the red ash
had fallen on the hearth-rug and smouldered
there and at last broken into flame. Though
a stern man he was just. He did not blame
his wife for what was his own fault, as many
bargemen, and other men, too, would have done.
* * * * * *
Mother was half wild with anxiety when at
last the three children turned up at Three
Chimneys, all very wet by now, for Peter seemed
to have come off on the others. But when she
had disentangled the truth of what had happened
from their mixed and incoherent narrative,
she owned that they had done quite right,
and could not possibly have done otherwise.
Nor did she put any obstacles in the way of
their accepting the cordial invitation with
which the bargeman had parted from them.
“Ye be here at seven to-morrow,” he had
said, “and I’ll take you the entire trip
to Farley and back, so I will, and not a penny
to pay. Nineteen locks!”
They did not know what locks were; but they
were at the bridge at seven, with bread and
cheese and half a soda cake, and quite a quarter
of a leg of mutton in a basket.
It was a glorious day. The old white horse
strained at the ropes, the barge glided smoothly
and steadily through the still water. The
sky was blue overhead. Mr. Bill was as nice
as anyone could possibly be. No one would
have thought that he could be the same man
who had held Peter by the ear. As for Mrs.
Bill, she had always been nice, as Bobbie
said, and so had the baby, and even Spot,
who might have bitten them quite badly if
he had liked.
“It was simply ripping, Mother,” said
Peter, when they reached home very happy,
very tired, and very dirty, “right over
that glorious aqueduct. And locks—you don’t
know what they’re like. You sink into the
ground and then, when you feel you’re never
going to stop going down, two great black
gates open slowly, slowly—you go out, and
there you are on the canal just like you were
before.”
“I know,” said Mother, “there are locks
on the Thames. Father and I used to go on
the river at Marlow before we were married.”
“And the dear, darling, ducky baby,” said
Bobbie; “it let me nurse it for ages and
ages—and it WAS so good. Mother, I wish
we had a baby to play with.”
“And everybody was so nice to us,” said
Phyllis, “everybody we met. And they say
we may fish whenever we like. And Bill is
going to show us the way next time he’s
in these parts. He says we don’t know really.”
“He said YOU didn’t know,” said Peter;
“but, Mother, he said he’d tell all the
bargees up and down the canal that we were
the real, right sort, and they were to treat
us like good pals, as we were.”
“So then I said,” Phyllis interrupted,
“we’d always each wear a red ribbon when
we went fishing by the canal, so they’d
know it was US, and we were the real, right
sort, and be nice to us!”
“So you’ve made another lot of friends,”
said Mother; “first the railway and then
the canal!”
“Oh, yes,” said Bobbie; “I think everyone
in the world is friends if you can only get
them to see you don’t want to be UN-friends.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Mother;
and she sighed. “Come, Chicks. It’s bedtime.”
“Yes,” said Phyllis. “Oh dear—and
we went up there to talk about what we’d
do for Perks’s birthday. And we haven’t
talked a single thing about it!”
“No more we have,” said Bobbie; “but
Peter’s saved Reginald Horace’s life.
I think that’s about good enough for one
evening.”
“Bobbie would have saved him if I hadn’t
knocked her down; twice I did,” said Peter,
loyally.
“So would I,” said Phyllis, “if I’d
known what to do.”
“Yes,” said Mother, “you’ve saved
a little child’s life. I do think that’s
enough for one evening. Oh, my darlings, thank
God YOU’RE all safe!”
Chapter IX. The pride of Perks.
It was breakfast-time. Mother’s face was
very bright as she poured the milk and ladled
out the porridge.
“I’ve sold another story, Chickies,”
she said; “the one about the King of the
Mussels, so there’ll be buns for tea. You
can go and get them as soon as they’re baked.
About eleven, isn’t it?”
Peter, Phyllis, and Bobbie exchanged glances
with each other, six glances in all. Then
Bobbie said:—
“Mother, would you mind if we didn’t have
the buns for tea to-night, but on the fifteenth?
That’s next Thursday.”
“I don’t mind when you have them, dear,”
said Mother, “but why?”
“Because it’s Perks’s birthday,” said
Bobbie; “he’s thirty-two, and he says
he doesn’t keep his birthday any more, because
he’s got other things to keep—not rabbits
or secrets—but the kids and the missus.”
“You mean his wife and children,” said
Mother.
“Yes,” said Phyllis; “it’s the same
thing, isn’t it?”
“And we thought we’d make a nice birthday
for him. He’s been so awfully jolly decent
to us, you know, Mother,” said Peter, “and
we agreed that next bun-day we’d ask you
if we could.”
“But suppose there hadn’t been a bun-day
before the fifteenth?” said Mother.
“Oh, then, we meant to ask you to let us
anti—antipate it, and go without when the
bun-day came.”
“Anticipate,” said Mother. “I see. Certainly.
It would be nice to put his name on the buns
with pink sugar, wouldn’t it?”
“Perks,” said Peter, “it’s not a pretty
name.”
“His other name’s Albert,” said Phyllis;
“I asked him once.”
“We might put A. P.,” said Mother; “I’ll
show you how when the day comes.”
This was all very well as far as it went.
But even fourteen halfpenny buns with A. P.
on them in pink sugar do not of themselves
make a very grand celebration.
“There are always flowers, of course,”
said Bobbie, later, when a really earnest
council was being held on the subject in the
hay-loft where the broken chaff-cutting machine
was, and the row of holes to drop hay through
into the hay-racks over the mangers of the
stables below.
“He’s got lots of flowers of his own,”
said Peter.
“But it’s always nice to have them given
you,” said Bobbie, “however many you’ve
got of your own. We can use flowers for trimmings
to the birthday. But there must be something
to trim besides buns.”
“Let’s all be quiet and think,” said
Phyllis; “no one’s to speak until it’s
thought of something.”
So they were all quiet and so very still that
a brown rat thought that there was no one
in the loft and came out very boldly. When
Bobbie sneezed, the rat was quite shocked
and hurried away, for he saw that a hay-loft
where such things could happen was no place
for a respectable middle-aged rat that liked
a quiet life.
“Hooray!” cried Peter, suddenly, “I’ve
got it.” He jumped up and kicked at the
loose hay.
“What?” said the others, eagerly.
“Why, Perks is so nice to everybody. There
must be lots of people in the village who’d
like to help to make him a birthday. Let’s
go round and ask everybody.”
“Mother said we weren’t to ask people
for things,” said Bobbie, doubtfully.
“For ourselves, she meant, silly, not for
other people. I’ll ask the old gentleman
too. You see if I don’t,” said Peter.
“Let’s ask Mother first,” said Bobbie.
“Oh, what’s the use of bothering Mother
about every little thing?” said Peter, “especially
when she’s busy. Come on. Let’s go down
to the village now and begin.”
So they went. The old lady at the Post-office
said she didn’t see why Perks should have
a birthday any more than anyone else.
“No,” said Bobbie, “I should like everyone
to have one. Only we know when his is.”
“Mine’s to-morrow,” said the old lady,
“and much notice anyone will take of it.
Go along with you.”
So they went.
And some people were kind, and some were crusty.
And some would give and some would not. It
is rather difficult work asking for things,
even for other people, as you have no doubt
found if you have ever tried it.
When the children got home and counted up
what had been given and what had been promised,
they felt that for the first day it was not
so bad. Peter wrote down the lists of the
things in the little pocket-book where he
kept the numbers of his engines. These were
the lists:—
GIVEN.
A tobacco pipe from the sweet shop.
Half a pound of tea from the grocer’s.
A woollen scarf slightly faded from the draper’s,
which was the
other side of the grocer’s.
A stuffed squirrel from the Doctor.
PROMISED.
A piece of meat from the butcher.
Six fresh eggs from the woman who lived in
the old turnpike cottage.
A piece of honeycomb and six bootlaces from
the cobbler, and an
iron shovel from the blacksmith’s.
Very early next morning Bobbie got up and
woke Phyllis. This had been agreed on between
them. They had not told Peter because they
thought he would think it silly. But they
told him afterwards, when it had turned out
all right.
They cut a big bunch of roses, and put it
in a basket with the needle-book that Phyllis
had made for Bobbie on her birthday, and a
very pretty blue necktie of Phyllis’s. Then
they wrote on a paper: ‘For Mrs. Ransome,
with our best love, because it is her birthday,’
and they put the paper in the basket, and
they took it to the Post-office, and went
in and put it on the counter and ran away
before the old woman at the Post-office had
time to get into her shop.
When they got home Peter had grown confidential
over helping Mother to get the breakfast and
had told her their plans.
“There’s no harm in it,” said Mother,
“but it depends HOW you do it. I only hope
he won’t be offended and think it’s CHARITY.
Poor people are very proud, you know.”
“It isn’t because he’s poor,” said
Phyllis; “it’s because we’re fond of
him.”
“I’ll find some things that Phyllis has
outgrown,” said Mother, “if you’re quite
sure you can give them to him without his
being offended. I should like to do some little
thing for him because he’s been so kind
to you. I can’t do much because we’re
poor ourselves. What are you writing, Bobbie?”
“Nothing particular,” said Bobbie, who
had suddenly begun to scribble. “I’m sure
he’d like the things, Mother.”
The morning of the fifteenth was spent very
happily in getting the buns and watching Mother
make A. P. on them with pink sugar. You know
how it’s done, of course? You beat up whites
of eggs and mix powdered sugar with them,
and put in a few drops of cochineal. And then
you make a cone of clean, white paper with
a little hole at the pointed end, and put
the pink egg-sugar in at the big end. It runs
slowly out at the pointed end, and you write
the letters with it just as though it were
a great fat pen full of pink sugar-ink.
The buns looked beautiful with A. P. on every
one, and, when they were put in a cool oven
to set the sugar, the children went up to
the village to collect the honey and the shovel
and the other promised things.
The old lady at the Post-office was standing
on her doorstep. The children said “Good
morning,” politely, as they passed.
“Here, stop a bit,” she said.
So they stopped.
“Those roses,” said she.
“Did you like them?” said Phyllis; “they
were as fresh as fresh. I made the needle-book,
but it was Bobbie’s present.” She skipped
joyously as she spoke.
“Here’s your basket,” said the Post-office
woman. She went in and brought out the basket.
It was full of fat, red gooseberries.
“I dare say Perks’s children would like
them,” said she.
“You ARE an old dear,” said Phyllis, throwing
her arms around the old lady’s fat waist.
“Perks WILL be pleased.”
“He won’t be half so pleased as I was
with your needle-book and the tie and the
pretty flowers and all,” said the old lady,
patting Phyllis’s shoulder. “You’re
good little souls, that you are. Look here.
I’ve got a pram round the back in the wood-lodge.
It was got for my Emmie’s first, that didn’t
live but six months, and she never had but
that one. I’d like Mrs. Perks to have it.
It ‘ud be a help to her with that great
boy of hers. Will you take it along?”
“OH!” said all the children together.
When Mrs. Ransome had got out the perambulator
and taken off the careful papers that covered
it, and dusted it all over, she said:—
“Well, there it is. I don’t know but what
I’d have given it to her before if I’d
thought of it. Only I didn’t quite know
if she’d accept of it from me. You tell
her it was my Emmie’s little one’s pram—”
“Oh, ISN’T it nice to think there is going
to be a real live baby in it again!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ransome, sighing, and
then laughing; “here, I’ll give you some
peppermint cushions for the little ones, and
then you run along before I give you the roof
off my head and the clothes off my back.”
All the things that had been collected for
Perks were packed into the perambulator, and
at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis
wheeled it down to the little yellow house
where Perks lived.
The house was very tidy. On the window ledge
was a jug of wild-flowers, big daisies, and
red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.
There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house,
and a partly washed boy put his head round
the door.
“Mother’s a-changing of herself,” he
said.
“Down in a minute,” a voice sounded down
the narrow, freshly scrubbed stairs.
The children waited. Next moment the stairs
creaked and Mrs. Perks came down, buttoning
her bodice. Her hair was brushed very smooth
and tight, and her face shone with soap and
water.
“I’m a bit late changing, Miss,” she
said to Bobbie, “owing to me having had
a extry clean-up to-day, along o’ Perks
happening to name its being his birthday.
I don’t know what put it into his head to
think of such a thing. We keeps the children’s
birthdays, of course; but him and me—we’re
too old for such like, as a general rule.”
“We knew it was his birthday,” said Peter,
“and we’ve got some presents for him outside
in the perambulator.”
As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs.
Perks gasped. When they were all unpacked,
she surprised and horrified the children by
sitting suddenly down on a wooden chair and
bursting into tears.
“Oh, don’t!” said everybody; “oh,
please don’t!” And Peter added, perhaps
a little impatiently: “What on earth is
the matter? You don’t mean to say you don’t
like it?”
Mrs. Perks only sobbed. The Perks children,
now as shiny-faced as anyone could wish, stood
at the wash-house door, and scowled at the
intruders. There was a silence, an awkward
silence.
“DON’T you like it?” said Peter, again,
while his sisters patted Mrs. Perks on the
back.
She stopped crying as suddenly as she had
begun.
“There, there, don’t you mind me. I’M
all right!” she said. “Like it? Why, it’s
a birthday such as Perks never ‘ad, not
even when ‘e was a boy and stayed with his
uncle, who was a corn chandler in his own
account. He failed afterwards. Like it? Oh—”
and then she went on and said all sorts of
things that I won’t write down, because
I am sure that Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis
would not like me to. Their ears got hotter
and hotter, and their faces redder and redder,
at the kind things Mrs. Perks said. They felt
they had done nothing to deserve all this
praise.
At last Peter said: “Look here, we’re
glad you’re pleased. But if you go on saying
things like that, we must go home. And we
did want to stay and see if Mr. Perks is pleased,
too. But we can’t stand this.”
“I won’t say another single word,” said
Mrs. Perks, with a beaming face, “but that
needn’t stop me thinking, need it? For if
ever—”
“Can we have a plate for the buns?” Bobbie
asked abruptly. And then Mrs. Perks hastily
laid the table for tea, and the buns and the
honey and the gooseberries were displayed
on plates, and the roses were put in two glass
jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs.
Perks said, “fit for a Prince.”
“To think!” she said, “me getting the
place tidy early, and the little ‘uns getting
the wild-flowers and all—when never did
I think there’d be anything more for him
except the ounce of his pet particular that
I got o’ Saturday and been saving up for
‘im ever since. Bless us! ‘e IS early!”
Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the
little front gate.
“Oh,” whispered Bobbie, “let’s hide
in the back kitchen, and YOU tell him about
it. But give him the tobacco first, because
you got it for him. And when you’ve told
him, we’ll all come in and shout, ‘Many
happy returns!’”
It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite
come off. To begin with, there was only just
time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to rush
into the wash-house, pushing the young and
open-mouthed Perks children in front of them.
There was not time to shut the door, so that,
without at all meaning it, they had to listen
to what went on in the kitchen. The wash-house
was a tight fit for the Perks children and
the Three Chimneys children, as well as all
the wash-house’s proper furniture, including
the mangle and the copper.
“Hullo, old woman!” they heard Mr. Perks’s
voice say; “here’s a pretty set-out!”
“It’s your birthday tea, Bert,” said
Mrs. Perks, “and here’s a ounce of your
extry particular. I got it o’ Saturday along
o’ your happening to remember it was your
birthday to-day.”
“Good old girl!” said Mr. Perks, and there
was a sound of a kiss.
“But what’s that pram doing here? And
what’s all these bundles? And where did
you get the sweetstuff, and—”
The children did not hear what Mrs. Perks
replied, because just then Bobbie gave a start,
put her hand in her pocket, and all her body
grew stiff with horror.
“Oh!” she whispered to the others, “whatever
shall we do? I forgot to put the labels on
any of the things! He won’t know what’s
from who. He’ll think it’s all US, and
that we’re trying to be grand or charitable
or something horrid.”
“Hush!” said Peter.
And then they heard the voice of Mr. Perks,
loud and rather angry.
“I don’t care,” he said; “I won’t
stand it, and so I tell you straight.”
“But,” said Mrs. Perks, “it’s them
children you make such a fuss about—the
children from the Three Chimneys.”
“I don’t care,” said Perks, firmly,
“not if it was a angel from Heaven. We’ve
got on all right all these years and no favours
asked. I’m not going to begin these sort
of charity goings-on at my time of life, so
don’t you think it, Nell.”
“Oh, hush!” said poor Mrs Perks; “Bert,
shut your silly tongue, for goodness’ sake.
The all three of ‘ems in the wash-house
a-listening to every word you speaks.”
“Then I’ll give them something to listen
to,” said the angry Perks; “I’ve spoke
my mind to them afore now, and I’ll do it
again,” he added, and he took two strides
to the wash-house door, and flung it wide
open—as wide, that is, as it would go, with
the tightly packed children behind it.
“Come out,” said Perks, “come out and
tell me what you mean by it. ‘Ave I ever
complained to you of being short, as you comes
this charity lay over me?”
“OH!” said Phyllis, “I thought you’d
be so pleased; I’ll never try to be kind
to anyone else as long as I live. No, I won’t,
not never.”
She burst into tears.
“We didn’t mean any harm,” said Peter.
“It ain’t what you means so much as what
you does,” said Perks.
“Oh, DON’T!” cried Bobbie, trying hard
to be braver than Phyllis, and to find more
words than Peter had done for explaining in.
“We thought you’d love it. We always have
things on our birthdays.”
“Oh, yes,” said Perks, “your own relations;
that’s different.”
“Oh, no,” Bobbie answered. “NOT our
own relations. All the servants always gave
us things at home, and us to them when it
was their birthdays. And when it was mine,
and Mother gave me the brooch like a buttercup,
Mrs. Viney gave me two lovely glass pots,
and nobody thought she was coming the charity
lay over us.”
“If it had been glass pots here,” said
Perks, “I wouldn’t ha’ said so much.
It’s there being all this heaps and heaps
of things I can’t stand. No—nor won’t,
neither.”
“But they’re not all from us—” said
Peter, “only we forgot to put the labels
on. They’re from all sorts of people in
the village.”
“Who put ‘em up to it, I’d like to know?”
asked Perks.
“Why, we did,” sniffed Phyllis.
Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair
and looked at them with what Bobbie afterwards
described as withering glances of gloomy despair.
“So you’ve been round telling the neighbours
we can’t make both ends meet? Well, now
you’ve disgraced us as deep as you can in
the neighbourhood, you can just take the whole
bag of tricks back w’ere it come from. Very
much obliged, I’m sure. I don’t doubt
but what you meant it kind, but I’d rather
not be acquainted with you any longer if it’s
all the same to you.” He deliberately turned
the chair round so that his back was turned
to the children. The legs of the chair grated
on the brick floor, and that was the only
sound that broke the silence.
Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.
“Look here,” she said, “this is most
awful.”
“That’s what I says,” said Perks, not
turning round.
“Look here,” said Bobbie, desperately,
“we’ll go if you like—and you needn’t
be friends with us any more if you don’t
want, but—”
“WE shall always be friends with YOU, however
nasty you are to us,” sniffed Phyllis, wildly.
“Be quiet,” said Peter, in a fierce aside.
“But before we go,” Bobbie went on desperately,
“do let us show you the labels we wrote
to put on the things.”
“I don’t want to see no labels,” said
Perks, “except proper luggage ones in my
own walk of life. Do you think I’ve kept
respectable and outer debt on what I gets,
and her having to take in washing, to be give
away for a laughing-stock to all the neighbours?”
“Laughing?” said Peter; “you don’t
know.”
“You’re a very hasty gentleman,” whined
Phyllis; “you know you were wrong once before,
about us not telling you the secret about
the Russian. Do let Bobbie tell you about
the labels!”
“Well. Go ahead!” said Perks, grudgingly.
“Well, then,” said Bobbie, fumbling miserably,
yet not without hope, in her tightly stuffed
pocket, “we wrote down all the things everybody
said when they gave us the things, with the
people’s names, because Mother said we ought
to be careful—because—but I wrote down
what she said—and you’ll see.”
But Bobbie could not read the labels just
at once. She had to swallow once or twice
before she could begin.
Mrs. Perks had been crying steadily ever since
her husband had opened the wash-house door.
Now she caught her breath, choked, and said:—
“Don’t you upset yourself, Missy. I know
you meant it kind if he doesn’t.”
“May I read the labels?” said Bobbie,
crying on to the slips as she tried to sort
them. “Mother’s first. It says:—
“‘Little Clothes for Mrs. Perks’s children.’
Mother said, ‘I’ll find some of Phyllis’s
things that she’s grown out of if you’re
quite sure Mr. Perks wouldn’t be offended
and think it’s meant for charity. I’d
like to do some little thing for him, because
he’s so kind to you. I can’t do much because
we’re poor ourselves.’”
Bobbie paused.
“That’s all right,” said Perks, “your
Ma’s a born lady. We’ll keep the little
frocks, and what not, Nell.”
“Then there’s the perambulator and the
gooseberries, and the sweets,” said Bobbie,
“they’re from Mrs. Ransome. She said:
‘I dare say Mr. Perks’s children would
like the sweets. And the perambulator was
got for my Emmie’s first—it didn’t live
but six months, and she’s never had but
that one. I’d like Mrs. Perks to have it.
It would be a help with her fine boy. I’d
have given it before if I’d been sure she’d
accept of it from me.’ She told me to tell
you,” Bobbie added, “that it was her Emmie’s
little one’s pram.”
“I can’t send that pram back, Bert,”
said Mrs Perks, firmly, “and I won’t.
So don’t you ask me—”
“I’m not a-asking anything,” said Perks,
gruffly.
“Then the shovel,” said Bobbie. “Mr.
James made it for you himself. And he said—where
is it? Oh, yes, here! He said, ‘You tell
Mr. Perks it’s a pleasure to make a little
trifle for a man as is so much respected,’
and then he said he wished he could shoe your
children and his own children, like they do
the horses, because, well, he knew what shoe
leather was.”
“James is a good enough chap,” said Perks.
“Then the honey,” said Bobbie, in haste,
“and the boot-laces. HE said he respected
a man that paid his way—and the butcher
said the same. And the old turnpike woman
said many was the time you’d lent her a
hand with her garden when you were a lad—and
things like that came home to roost—I don’t
know what she meant. And everybody who gave
anything said they liked you, and it was a
very good idea of ours; and nobody said anything
about charity or anything horrid like that.
And the old gentleman gave Peter a gold pound
for you, and said you were a man who knew
your work. And I thought you’d LOVE to know
how fond people are of you, and I never was
so unhappy in my life. Good-bye. I hope you’ll
forgive us some day—”
She could say no more, and she turned to go.
“Stop,” said Perks, still with his back
to them; “I take back every word I’ve
said contrary to what you’d wish. Nell,
set on the kettle.”
“We’ll take the things away if you’re
unhappy about them,” said Peter; “but
I think everybody’ll be most awfully disappointed,
as well as us.”
“I’m not unhappy about them,” said Perks;
“I don’t know,” he added, suddenly wheeling
the chair round and showing a very odd-looking
screwed-up face, “I don’t know as ever
I was better pleased. Not so much with the
presents—though they’re an A1 collection—but
the kind respect of our neighbours. That’s
worth having, eh, Nell?”
“I think it’s all worth having,” said
Mrs. Perks, “and you’ve made a most ridiculous
fuss about nothing, Bert, if you ask me.”
“No, I ain’t,” said Perks, firmly; “if
a man didn’t respect hisself, no one wouldn’t
do it for him.”
“But everyone respects you,” said Bobbie;
“they all said so.”
“I knew you’d like it when you really
understood,” said Phyllis, brightly.
“Humph! You’ll stay to tea?” said Mr.
Perks.
Later on Peter proposed Mr. Perks’s health.
And Mr. Perks proposed a toast, also honoured
in tea, and the toast was, “May the garland
of friendship be ever green,” which was
much more poetical than anyone had expected
from him.
* * * * * *
“Jolly good little kids, those,” said
Mr. Perks to his wife as they went to bed.
“Oh, they’re all right, bless their hearts,”
said his wife; “it’s you that’s the
aggravatingest old thing that ever was. I
was ashamed of you—I tell you—”
“You didn’t need to be, old gal. I climbed
down handsome soon as I understood it wasn’t
charity. But charity’s what I never did
abide, and won’t neither.”
* * * * * *
All sorts of people were made happy by that
birthday party. Mr. Perks and Mrs. Perks and
the little Perkses by all the nice things
and by the kind thoughts of their neighbours;
the Three Chimneys children by the success,
undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of
their plan; and Mrs. Ransome every time she
saw the fat Perks baby in the perambulator.
Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to
thank people for their kind birthday presents,
and after each visit felt that she had a better
friend than she had thought.
“Yes,” said Perks, reflectively, “it’s
not so much what you does as what you means;
that’s what I say. Now if it had been charity—”
“Oh, drat charity,” said Mrs. Perks; “nobody
won’t offer you charity, Bert, however much
you was to want it, I lay. That was just friendliness,
that was.”
When the clergyman called on Mrs. Perks, she
told him all about it. “It WAS friendliness,
wasn’t it, Sir?” said she.
“I think,” said the clergyman, “it was
what is sometimes called loving-kindness.”
So you see it was all right in the end. But
if one does that sort of thing, one has to
be careful to do it in the right way. For,
as Mr. Perks said, when he had time to think
it over, it’s not so much what you do, as
what you mean.
Chapter X. The terrible secret.
When they first went to live at Three Chimneys,
the children had talked a great deal about
their Father, and had asked a great many questions
about him, and what he was doing and where
he was and when he would come home. Mother
always answered their questions as well as
she could. But as the time went on they grew
to speak less of him. Bobbie had felt almost
from the first that for some strange miserable
reason these questions hurt Mother and made
her sad. And little by little the others came
to have this feeling, too, though they could
not have put it into words.
One day, when Mother was working so hard that
she could not leave off even for ten minutes,
Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare
room that they called Mother’s workshop.
It had hardly any furniture. Just a table
and a chair and a rug. But always big pots
of flowers on the window-sills and on the
mantelpiece. The children saw to that. And
from the three long uncurtained windows the
beautiful stretch of meadow and moorland,
the far violet of the hills, and the unchanging
changefulness of cloud and sky.
“Here’s your tea, Mother-love,” said
Bobbie; “do drink it while it’s hot.”
Mother laid down her pen among the pages that
were scattered all over the table, pages covered
with her writing, which was almost as plain
as print, and much prettier. She ran her hands
into her hair, as if she were going to pull
it out by handfuls.
“Poor dear head,” said Bobbie, “does
it ache?”
“No—yes—not much,” said Mother. “Bobbie,
do you think Peter and Phil are FORGETTING
Father?”
“NO,” said Bobbie, indignantly. “Why?”
“You none of you ever speak of him now.”
Bobbie stood first on one leg and then on
the other.
“We often talk about him when we’re by
ourselves,” she said.
“But not to me,” said Mother. “Why?”
Bobbie did not find it easy to say why.
“I—you—” she said and stopped. She
went over to the window and looked out.
“Bobbie, come here,” said her Mother,
and Bobbie came.
“Now,” said Mother, putting her arm round
Bobbie and laying her ruffled head against
Bobbie’s shoulder, “try to tell me, dear.”
Bobbie fidgeted.
“Tell Mother.”
“Well, then,” said Bobbie, “I thought
you were so unhappy about Daddy not being
here, it made you worse when I talked about
him. So I stopped doing it.”
“And the others?”
“I don’t know about the others,” said
Bobbie. “I never said anything about THAT
to them. But I expect they felt the same about
it as me.”
“Bobbie dear,” said Mother, still leaning
her head against her, “I’ll tell you.
Besides parting from Father, he and I have
had a great sorrow—oh, terrible—worse
than anything you can think of, and at first
it did hurt to hear you all talking of him
as if everything were just the same. But it
would be much more terrible if you were to
forget him. That would be worse than anything.”
“The trouble,” said Bobbie, in a very
little voice—“I promised I would never
ask you any questions, and I never have, have
I? But—the trouble—it won’t last always?”
“No,” said Mother, “the worst will be
over when Father comes home to us.”
“I wish I could comfort you,” said Bobbie.
“Oh, my dear, do you suppose you don’t?
Do you think I haven’t noticed how good
you’ve all been, not quarrelling nearly
as much as you used to—and all the little
kind things you do for me—the flowers, and
cleaning my shoes, and tearing up to make
my bed before I get time to do it myself?”
Bobbie HAD sometimes wondered whether Mother
noticed these things.
“That’s nothing,” she said, “to what—”
“I MUST get on with my work,” said Mother,
giving Bobbie one last squeeze. “Don’t
say anything to the others.”
That evening in the hour before bed-time instead
of reading to the children Mother told them
stories of the games she and Father used to
have when they were children and lived near
each other in the country—tales of the adventures
of Father with Mother’s brothers when they
were all boys together. Very funny stories
they were, and the children laughed as they
listened.
“Uncle Edward died before he was grown up,
didn’t he?” said Phyllis, as Mother lighted
the bedroom candles.
“Yes, dear,” said Mother, “you would
have loved him. He was such a brave boy, and
so adventurous. Always in mischief, and yet
friends with everybody in spite of it. And
your Uncle Reggie’s in Ceylon—yes, and
Father’s away, too. But I think they’d
all like to think we’d enjoyed talking about
the things they used to do. Don’t you think
so?”
“Not Uncle Edward,” said Phyllis, in a
shocked tone; “he’s in Heaven.”
“You don’t suppose he’s forgotten us
and all the old times, because God has taken
him, any more than I forget him. Oh, no, he
remembers. He’s only away for a little time.
We shall see him some day.”
“And Uncle Reggie—and Father, too?”
said Peter.
“Yes,” said Mother. “Uncle Reggie and
Father, too. Good night, my darlings.”
“Good night,” said everyone. Bobbie hugged
her mother more closely even than usual, and
whispered in her ear, “Oh, I do love you
so, Mummy—I do—I do—”
When Bobbie came to think it all over, she
tried not to wonder what the great trouble
was. But she could not always help it. Father
was not dead—like poor Uncle Edward—Mother
had said so. And he was not ill, or Mother
would have been with him. Being poor wasn’t
the trouble. Bobbie knew it was something
nearer the heart than money could be.
“I mustn’t try to think what it is,”
she told herself; “no, I mustn’t. I AM
glad Mother noticed about us not quarrelling
so much. We’ll keep that up.”
And alas, that very afternoon she and Peter
had what Peter called a first-class shindy.
They had not been a week at Three Chimneys
before they had asked Mother to let them have
a piece of garden each for their very own,
and she had agreed, and the south border under
the peach trees had been divided into three
pieces and they were allowed to plant whatever
they liked there.
Phyllis had planted mignonette and nasturtium
and Virginia Stock in hers. The seeds came
up, and though they looked just like weeds,
Phyllis believed that they would bear flowers
some day. The Virginia Stock justified her
faith quite soon, and her garden was gay with
a band of bright little flowers, pink and
white and red and mauve.
“I can’t weed for fear I pull up the wrong
things,” she used to say comfortably; “it
saves such a lot of work.”
Peter sowed vegetable seeds in his—carrots
and onions and turnips. The seed was given
to him by the farmer who lived in the nice
black-and-white, wood-and-plaster house just
beyond the bridge. He kept turkeys and guinea
fowls, and was a most amiable man. But Peter’s
vegetables never had much of a chance, because
he liked to use the earth of his garden for
digging canals, and making forts and earthworks
for his toy soldiers. And the seeds of vegetables
rarely come to much in a soil that is constantly
disturbed for the purposes of war and irrigation.
Bobbie planted rose-bushes in her garden,
but all the little new leaves of the rose-bushes
shrivelled and withered, perhaps because she
moved them from the other part of the garden
in May, which is not at all the right time
of year for moving roses. But she would not
own that they were dead, and hoped on against
hope, until the day when Perks came up to
see the garden, and told her quite plainly
that all her roses were as dead as doornails.
“Only good for bonfires, Miss,” he said.
“You just dig ‘em up and burn ‘em, and
I’ll give you some nice fresh roots outer
my garden; pansies, and stocks, and sweet
willies, and forget-me-nots. I’ll bring
‘em along to-morrow if you get the ground
ready.”
So next day she set to work, and that happened
to be the day when Mother had praised her
and the others about not quarrelling. She
moved the rose-bushes and carried them to
the other end of the garden, where the rubbish
heap was that they meant to make a bonfire
of when Guy Fawkes’ Day came.
Meanwhile Peter had decided to flatten out
all his forts and earthworks, with a view
to making a model of the railway-tunnel, cutting,
embankment, canal, aqueduct, bridges, and
all.
So when Bobbie came back from her last thorny
journey with the dead rose-bushes, he had
got the rake and was using it busily.
“I was using the rake,” said Bobbie.
“Well, I’m using it now,” said Peter.
“But I had it first,” said Bobbie.
“Then it’s my turn now,” said Peter.
And that was how the quarrel began.
“You’re always being disagreeable about
nothing,” said Peter, after some heated
argument.
“I had the rake first,” said Bobbie, flushed
and defiant, holding on to its handle.
“Don’t—I tell you I said this morning
I meant to have it. Didn’t I, Phil?”
Phyllis said she didn’t want to be mixed
up in their rows. And instantly, of course,
she was.
“If you remember, you ought to say.”
“Of course she doesn’t remember—but
she might say so.”
“I wish I’d had a brother instead of two
whiny little kiddy sisters,” said Peter.
This was always recognised as indicating the
high-water mark of Peter’s rage.
Bobbie made the reply she always made to it.
“I can’t think why little boys were ever
invented,” and just as she said it she looked
up, and saw the three long windows of Mother’s
workshop flashing in the red rays of the sun.
The sight brought back those words of praise:—
“You don’t quarrel like you used to do.”
“OH!” cried Bobbie, just as if she had
been hit, or had caught her finger in a door,
or had felt the hideous sharp beginnings of
toothache.
“What’s the matter?” said Phyllis.
Bobbie wanted to say: “Don’t let’s quarrel.
Mother hates it so,” but though she tried
hard, she couldn’t. Peter was looking too
disagreeable and insulting.
“Take the horrid rake, then,” was the
best she could manage. And she suddenly let
go her hold on the handle. Peter had been
holding on to it too firmly and pullingly,
and now that the pull the other way was suddenly
stopped, he staggered and fell over backward,
the teeth of the rake between his feet.
“Serve you right,” said Bobbie, before
she could stop herself.
Peter lay still for half a moment—long enough
to frighten Bobbie a little. Then he frightened
her a little more, for he sat up—screamed
once—turned rather pale, and then lay back
and began to shriek, faintly but steadily.
It sounded exactly like a pig being killed
a quarter of a mile off.
Mother put her head out of the window, and
it wasn’t half a minute after that she was
in the garden kneeling by the side of Peter,
who never for an instant ceased to squeal.
“What happened, Bobbie?” Mother asked.
“It was the rake,” said Phyllis. “Peter
was pulling at it, so was Bobbie, and she
let go and he went over.”
“Stop that noise, Peter,” said Mother.
“Come. Stop at once.”
Peter used up what breath he had left in a
last squeal and stopped.
“Now,” said Mother, “are you hurt?”
“If he was really hurt, he wouldn’t make
such a fuss,” said Bobbie, still trembling
with fury; “he’s not a coward!”
“I think my foot’s broken off, that’s
all,” said Peter, huffily, and sat up. Then
he turned quite white. Mother put her arm
round him.
“He IS hurt,” she said; “he’s fainted.
Here, Bobbie, sit down and take his head on
your lap.”
Then Mother undid Peter’s boots. As she
took the right one off, something dripped
from his foot on to the ground. It was red
blood. And when the stocking came off there
were three red wounds in Peter’s foot and
ankle, where the teeth of the rake had bitten
him, and his foot was covered with red smears.
“Run for water—a basinful,” said Mother,
and Phyllis ran. She upset most of the water
out of the basin in her haste, and had to
fetch more in a jug.
Peter did not open his eyes again till Mother
had tied her handkerchief round his foot,
and she and Bobbie had carried him in and
laid him on the brown wooden settle in the
dining-room. By this time Phyllis was halfway
to the Doctor’s.
Mother sat by Peter and bathed his foot and
talked to him, and Bobbie went out and got
tea ready, and put on the kettle.
“It’s all I can do,” she told herself.
“Oh, suppose Peter should die, or be a helpless
cripple for life, or have to walk with crutches,
or wear a boot with a sole like a log of wood!”
She stood by the back door reflecting on these
gloomy possibilities, her eyes fixed on the
water-butt.
“I wish I’d never been born,” she said,
and she said it out loud.
“Why, lawk a mercy, what’s that for?”
asked a voice, and Perks stood before her
with a wooden trug basket full of green-leaved
things and soft, loose earth.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Peter’s
hurt his foot with a rake—three great gaping
wounds, like soldiers get. And it was partly
my fault.”
“That it wasn’t, I’ll go bail,” said
Perks. “Doctor seen him?”
“Phyllis has gone for the Doctor.”
“He’ll be all right; you see if he isn’t,”
said Perks. “Why, my father’s second cousin
had a hay-fork run into him, right into his
inside, and he was right as ever in a few
weeks, all except his being a bit weak in
the head afterwards, and they did say that
it was along of his getting a touch of the
sun in the hay-field, and not the fork at
all. I remember him well. A kind-’earted
chap, but soft, as you might say.”
Bobbie tried to let herself be cheered by
this heartening reminiscence.
“Well,” said Perks, “you won’t want
to be bothered with gardening just this minute,
I dare say. You show me where your garden
is, and I’ll pop the bits of stuff in for
you. And I’ll hang about, if I may make
so free, to see the Doctor as he comes out
and hear what he says. You cheer up, Missie.
I lay a pound he ain’t hurt, not to speak
of.”
But he was. The Doctor came and looked at
the foot and bandaged it beautifully, and
said that Peter must not put it to the ground
for at least a week.
“He won’t be lame, or have to wear crutches
or a lump on his foot, will he?” whispered
Bobbie, breathlessly, at the door.
“My aunt! No!” said Dr. Forrest; “he’ll
be as nimble as ever on his pins in a fortnight.
Don’t you worry, little Mother Goose.”
It was when Mother had gone to the gate with
the Doctor to take his last instructions and
Phyllis was filling the kettle for tea, that
Peter and Bobbie found themselves alone.
“He says you won’t be lame or anything,”
said Bobbie.
“Oh, course I shan’t, silly,” said Peter,
very much relieved all the same.
“Oh, Peter, I AM so sorry,” said Bobbie,
after a pause.
“That’s all right,” said Peter, gruffly.
“It was ALL my fault,” said Bobbie.
“Rot,” said Peter.
“If we hadn’t quarrelled, it wouldn’t
have happened. I knew it was wrong to quarrel.
I wanted to say so, but somehow I couldn’t.”
“Don’t drivel,” said Peter. “I shouldn’t
have stopped if you HAD said it. Not likely.
And besides, us rowing hadn’t anything to
do with it. I might have caught my foot in
the hoe, or taken off my fingers in the chaff-cutting
machine or blown my nose off with fireworks.
It would have been hurt just the same whether
we’d been rowing or not.”
“But I knew it was wrong to quarrel,”
said Bobbie, in tears, “and now you’re
hurt and—”
“Now look here,” said Peter, firmly, “you
just dry up. If you’re not careful, you’ll
turn into a beastly little Sunday-school prig,
so I tell you.”
“I don’t mean to be a prig. But it’s
so hard not to be when you’re really trying
to be good.”
(The Gentle Reader may perhaps have suffered
from this difficulty.)
“Not it,” said Peter; “it’s a jolly
good thing it wasn’t you was hurt. I’m
glad it was ME. There! If it had been you,
you’d have been lying on the sofa looking
like a suffering angel and being the light
of the anxious household and all that. And
I couldn’t have stood it.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Bobbie.
“Yes, you would,” said Peter.
“I tell you I shouldn’t.”
“I tell you you would.”
“Oh, children,” said Mother’s voice
at the door. “Quarrelling again? Already?”
“We aren’t quarrelling—not really,”
said Peter. “I wish you wouldn’t think
it’s rows every time we don’t agree!”
When Mother had gone out again, Bobbie broke
out:—
“Peter, I AM sorry you’re hurt. But you
ARE a beast to say I’m a prig.”
“Well,” said Peter unexpectedly, “perhaps
I am. You did say I wasn’t a coward, even
when you were in such a wax. The only thing
is—don’t you be a prig, that’s all.
You keep your eyes open and if you feel priggishness
coming on just stop in time. See?”
“Yes,” said Bobbie, “I see.”
“Then let’s call it Pax,” said Peter,
magnanimously: “bury the hatchet in the
fathoms of the past. Shake hands on it. I
say, Bobbie, old chap, I am tired.”
He was tired for many days after that, and
the settle seemed hard and uncomfortable in
spite of all the pillows and bolsters and
soft folded rugs. It was terrible not to be
able to go out. They moved the settle to the
window, and from there Peter could see the
smoke of the trains winding along the valley.
But he could not see the trains.
At first Bobbie found it quite hard to be
as nice to him as she wanted to be, for fear
he should think her priggish. But that soon
wore off, and both she and Phyllis were, as
he observed, jolly good sorts. Mother sat
with him when his sisters were out. And the
words, “he’s not a coward,” made Peter
determined not to make any fuss about the
pain in his foot, though it was rather bad,
especially at night.
Praise helps people very much, sometimes.
There were visitors, too. Mrs. Perks came
up to ask how he was, and so did the Station
Master, and several of the village people.
But the time went slowly, slowly.
“I do wish there was something to read,”
said Peter. “I’ve read all our books fifty
times over.”
“I’ll go to the Doctor’s,” said Phyllis;
“he’s sure to have some.”
“Only about how to be ill, and about people’s
nasty insides, I expect,” said Peter.
“Perks has a whole heap of Magazines that
came out of trains when people are tired of
them,” said Bobbie. “I’ll run down and
ask him.”
So the girls went their two ways.
Bobbie found Perks busy cleaning lamps.
“And how’s the young gent?” said he.
“Better, thanks,” said Bobbie, “but
he’s most frightfully bored. I came to ask
if you’d got any Magazines you could lend
him.”
“There, now,” said Perks, regretfully,
rubbing his ear with a black and oily lump
of cotton waste, “why didn’t I think of
that, now? I was trying to think of something
as ‘ud amuse him only this morning, and
I couldn’t think of anything better than
a guinea-pig. And a young chap I know’s
going to fetch that over for him this tea-time.”
“How lovely! A real live guinea! He will
be pleased. But he’d like the Magazines
as well.”
“That’s just it,” said Perks. “I’ve
just sent the pick of ‘em to Snigson’s
boy—him what’s just getting over the pewmonia.
But I’ve lots of illustrated papers left.”
He turned to the pile of papers in the corner
and took up a heap six inches thick.
“There!” he said. “I’ll just slip
a bit of string and a bit of paper round ‘em.”
He pulled an old newspaper from the pile and
spread it on the table, and made a neat parcel
of it.
“There,” said he, “there’s lots of
pictures, and if he likes to mess ‘em about
with his paint-box, or coloured chalks or
what not, why, let him. I don’t want ‘em.”
“You’re a dear,” said Bobbie, took the
parcel, and started. The papers were heavy,
and when she had to wait at the level-crossing
while a train went by, she rested the parcel
on the top of the gate. And idly she looked
at the printing on the paper that the parcel
was wrapped in.
Suddenly she clutched the parcel tighter and
bent her head over it. It seemed like some
horrible dream. She read on—the bottom of
the column was torn off—she could read no
farther.
She never remembered how she got home. But
she went on tiptoe to her room and locked
the door. Then she undid the parcel and read
that printed column again, sitting on the
edge of her bed, her hands and feet icy cold
and her face burning. When she had read all
there was, she drew a long, uneven breath.
“So now I know,” she said.
What she had read was headed, ‘End of the
Trial. Verdict. Sentence.’
The name of the man who had been tried was
the name of her Father. The verdict was ‘Guilty.’
And the sentence was ‘Five years’ Penal
Servitude.’
“Oh, Daddy,” she whispered, crushing the
paper hard, “it’s not true—I don’t
believe it. You never did it! Never, never,
never!”
There was a hammering on the door.
“What is it?” said Bobbie.
“It’s me,” said the voice of Phyllis;
“tea’s ready, and
a boy’s brought Peter a guinea-pig. Come
along down.”
And Bobbie had to.
Chapter XI. The hound in the red jersey.
Bobbie knew the secret now. A sheet of old
newspaper wrapped round a parcel—just a
little chance like that—had given the secret
to her. And she had to go down to tea and
pretend that there was nothing the matter.
The pretence was bravely made, but it wasn’t
very successful.
For when she came in, everyone looked up from
tea and saw her pink-lidded eyes and her pale
face with red tear-blotches on it.
“My darling,” cried Mother, jumping up
from the tea-tray, “whatever IS the matter?”
“My head aches, rather,” said Bobbie.
And indeed it did.
“Has anything gone wrong?” Mother asked.
“I’m all right, really,” said Bobbie,
and she telegraphed to her Mother from her
swollen eyes this brief, imploring message—“NOT
before the others!”
Tea was not a cheerful meal. Peter was so
distressed by the obvious fact that something
horrid had happened to Bobbie that he limited
his speech to repeating, “More bread and
butter, please,” at startlingly short intervals.
Phyllis stroked her sister’s hand under
the table to express sympathy, and knocked
her cup over as she did it. Fetching a cloth
and wiping up the spilt milk helped Bobbie
a little. But she thought that tea would never
end. Yet at last it did end, as all things
do at last, and when Mother took out the tray,
Bobbie followed her.
“She’s gone to own up,” said Phyllis
to Peter; “I wonder what she’s done.”
“Broken something, I suppose,” said Peter,
“but she needn’t be so silly over it.
Mother never rows for accidents. Listen! Yes,
they’re going upstairs. She’s taking Mother
up to show her—the water-jug with storks
on it, I expect it is.”
Bobbie, in the kitchen, had caught hold of
Mother’s hand as she set down the tea-things.
“What is it?” Mother asked.
But Bobbie only said, “Come upstairs, come
up where nobody can hear us.”
When she had got Mother alone in her room
she locked the door and then stood quite still,
and quite without words.
All through tea she had been thinking of what
to say; she had decided that “I know all,”
or “All is known to me,” or “The terrible
secret is a secret no longer,” would be
the proper thing. But now that she and her
Mother and that awful sheet of newspaper were
alone in the room together, she found that
she could say nothing.
Suddenly she went to Mother and put her arms
round her and began to cry again. And still
she could find no words, only, “Oh, Mammy,
oh, Mammy, oh, Mammy,” over and over again.
Mother held her very close and waited.
Suddenly Bobbie broke away from her and went
to her bed. From under her mattress she pulled
out the paper she had hidden there, and held
it out, pointing to her Father’s name with
a finger that shook.
“Oh, Bobbie,” Mother cried, when one little
quick look had shown her what it was, “you
don’t BELIEVE it? You don’t believe Daddy
did it?”
“NO,” Bobbie almost shouted. She had stopped
crying.
“That’s all right,” said Mother. “It’s
not true. And they’ve shut him up in prison,
but he’s done nothing wrong. He’s good
and noble and honourable, and he belongs to
us. We have to think of that, and be proud
of him, and wait.”
Again Bobbie clung to her Mother, and again
only one word came to her, but now that word
was “Daddy,” and “Oh, Daddy, oh, Daddy,
oh, Daddy!” again and again.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Mammy?” she
asked presently.
“Are you going to tell the others?” Mother
asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because—”
“Exactly,” said Mother; “so you understand
why I didn’t tell you. We two must help
each other to be brave.”
“Yes,” said Bobbie; “Mother, will it
make you more unhappy if you tell me all about
it? I want to understand.”
So then, sitting cuddled up close to her Mother,
Bobbie heard “all about it.” She heard
how those men, who had asked to see Father
on that remembered last night when the Engine
was being mended, had come to arrest him,
charging him with selling State secrets to
the Russians—with being, in fact, a spy
and a traitor. She heard about the trial,
and about the evidence—letters, found in
Father’s desk at the office, letters that
convinced the jury that Father was guilty.
“Oh, how could they look at him and believe
it!” cried Bobbie; “and how could ANY
one do such a thing!”
“SOMEONE did it,” said Mother, “and
all the evidence was against Father. Those
letters—”
“Yes. How did the letters get into his desk?”
“Someone put them there. And the person
who put them there was the person who was
really guilty.”
“HE must be feeling pretty awful all this
time,” said Bobbie, thoughtfully.
“I don’t believe he had any feelings,”
Mother said hotly; “he couldn’t have done
a thing like that if he had.”
“Perhaps he just shoved the letters into
the desk to hide them when he thought he was
going to be found out. Why don’t you tell
the lawyers, or someone, that it must have
been that person? There wasn’t anyone that
would have hurt Father on purpose, was there?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. The man
under him who got Daddy’s place when he—when
the awful thing happened—he was always jealous
of your Father because Daddy was so clever
and everyone thought such a lot of him. And
Daddy never quite trusted that man.”
“Couldn’t we explain all that to someone?”
“Nobody will listen,” said Mother, very
bitterly, “nobody at all. Do you suppose
I’ve not tried everything? No, my dearest,
there’s nothing to be done. All we can do,
you and I and Daddy, is to be brave, and patient,
and—” she spoke very softly—“to pray,
Bobbie, dear.”
“Mother, you’ve got very thin,” said
Bobbie, abruptly.
“A little, perhaps.”
“And oh,” said Bobbie, “I do think you’re
the bravest person in the world as well as
the nicest!”
“We won’t talk of all this any more, will
we, dear?” said Mother; “we must bear
it and be brave. And, darling, try not to
think of it. Try to be cheerful, and to amuse
yourself and the others. It’s much easier
for me if you can be a little bit happy and
enjoy things. Wash your poor little round
face, and let’s go out into the garden for
a bit.”
The other two were very gentle and kind to
Bobbie. And they did not ask her what was
the matter. This was Peter’s idea, and he
had drilled Phyllis, who would have asked
a hundred questions if she had been left to
herself.
A week later Bobbie managed to get away alone.
And once more she wrote a letter. And once
more it was to the old gentleman.
“My dear Friend,” she said, “you see
what is in this paper. It is not true. Father
never did it. Mother says someone put the
papers in Father’s desk, and she says the
man under him that got Father’s place afterwards
was jealous of Father, and Father suspected
him a long time. But nobody listens to a word
she says, but you are so good and clever,
and you found out about the Russian gentleman’s
wife directly. Can’t you find out who did
the treason because he wasn’t Father upon
my honour; he is an Englishman and uncapable
to do such things, and then they would let
Father out of prison. It is dreadful, and
Mother is getting so thin. She told us once
to pray for all prisoners and captives. I
see now. Oh, do help me—there is only just
Mother and me know, and we can’t do anything.
Peter and Phil don’t know. I’ll pray for
you twice every day as long as I live if you’ll
only try—just try to find out. Think if
it was YOUR Daddy, what you would feel. Oh,
do, do, DO help me. With love
“I remain Your affectionately little friend
“Roberta.
P.S. Mother would send her kind regards if
she knew I am writing—but it is no use telling
her I am, in case you can’t do anything.
But I know you will. Bobbie with best love.”
She cut the account of her Father’s trial
out of the newspaper with Mother’s big cutting-out
scissors, and put it in the envelope with
her letter.
Then she took it down to the station, going
out the back way and round by the road, so
that the others should not see her and offer
to come with her, and she gave the letter
to the Station Master to give to the old gentleman
next morning.
“Where HAVE you been?” shouted Peter,
from the top of the yard wall where he and
Phyllis were.
“To the station, of course,” said Bobbie;
“give us a hand, Pete.”
She set her foot on the lock of the yard door.
Peter reached down a hand.
“What on earth?” she asked as she reached
the wall-top—for Phyllis and Peter were
very muddy. A lump of wet clay lay between
them on the wall, they had each a slip of
slate in a very dirty hand, and behind Peter,
out of the reach of accidents, were several
strange rounded objects rather like very fat
sausages, hollow, but closed up at one end.
“It’s nests,” said Peter, “swallows’
nests. We’re going to dry them in the oven
and hang them up with string under the eaves
of the coach-house.”
“Yes,” said Phyllis; “and then we’re
going to save up all the wool and hair we
can get, and in the spring we’ll line them,
and then how pleased the swallows will be!”
“I’ve often thought people don’t do
nearly enough for dumb animals,” said Peter
with an air of virtue. “I do think people
might have thought of making nests for poor
little swallows before this.”
“Oh,” said Bobbie, vaguely, “if everybody
thought of everything, there’d be nothing
left for anybody else to think about.”
“Look at the nests—aren’t they pretty?”
said Phyllis, reaching across Peter to grasp
a nest.
“Look out, Phil, you goat,” said her brother.
But it was too late; her strong little fingers
had crushed the nest.
“There now,” said Peter.
“Never mind,” said Bobbie.
“It IS one of my own,” said Phyllis, “so
you needn’t jaw, Peter. Yes, we’ve put
our initial names on the ones we’ve done,
so that the swallows will know who they’ve
got to be so grateful to and fond of.”
“Swallows can’t read, silly,” said Peter.
“Silly yourself,” retorted Phyllis; “how
do you know?”
“Who thought of making the nests, anyhow?”
shouted Peter.
“I did,” screamed Phyllis.
“Nya,” rejoined Peter, “you only thought
of making hay ones and sticking them in the
ivy for the sparrows, and they’d have been
sopping LONG before egg-laying time. It was
me said clay and swallows.”
“I don’t care what you said.”
“Look,” said Bobbie, “I’ve made the
nest all right again. Give me the bit of stick
to mark your initial name on it. But how can
you? Your letter and Peter’s are the same.
P. for Peter, P. for Phyllis.”
“I put F. for Phyllis,” said the child
of that name. “That’s how it sounds. The
swallows wouldn’t spell Phyllis with a P.,
I’m certain-sure.”
“They can’t spell at all,” Peter was
still insisting.
“Then why do you see them always on Christmas
cards and valentines with letters round their
necks? How would they know where to go if
they couldn’t read?”
“That’s only in pictures. You never saw
one really with letters round its neck.”
“Well, I have a pigeon, then; at least Daddy
told me they did. Only it was under their
wings and not round their necks, but it comes
to the same thing, and—”
“I say,” interrupted Bobbie, “there’s
to be a paperchase to-morrow.”
“Who?” Peter asked.
“Grammar School. Perks thinks the hare will
go along by the line at first. We might go
along the cutting. You can see a long way
from there.”
The paperchase was found to be a more amusing
subject of conversation than the reading powers
of swallows. Bobbie had hoped it might be.
And next morning Mother let them take their
lunch and go out for the day to see the paperchase.
“If we go to the cutting,” said Peter,
“we shall see the workmen, even if we miss
the paperchase.”
Of course it had taken some time to get the
line clear from the rocks and earth and trees
that had fallen on it when the great landslip
happened. That was the occasion, you will
remember, when the three children saved the
train from being wrecked by waving six little
red-flannel-petticoat flags. It is always
interesting to watch people working, especially
when they work with such interesting things
as spades and picks and shovels and planks
and barrows, when they have cindery red fires
in iron pots with round holes in them, and
red lamps hanging near the works at night.
Of course the children were never out at night;
but once, at dusk, when Peter had got out
of his bedroom skylight on to the roof, he
had seen the red lamp shining far away at
the edge of the cutting. The children had
often been down to watch the work, and this
day the interest of picks and spades, and
barrows being wheeled along planks, completely
put the paperchase out of their heads, so
that they quite jumped when a voice just behind
them panted, “Let me pass, please.” It
was the hare—a big-boned, loose-limbed boy,
with dark hair lying flat on a very damp forehead.
The bag of torn paper under his arm was fastened
across one shoulder by a strap. The children
stood back. The hare ran along the line, and
the workmen leaned on their picks to watch
him. He ran on steadily and disappeared into
the mouth of the tunnel.
“That’s against the by-laws,” said the
foreman.
“Why worry?” said the oldest workman;
“live and let live’s what I always say.
Ain’t you never been young yourself, Mr.
Bates?”
“I ought to report him,” said the foreman.
“Why spoil sport’s what I always say.”
“Passengers are forbidden to cross the line
on any pretence,” murmured the foreman,
doubtfully.
“He ain’t no passenger,” said one of
the workmen.
“Nor ‘e ain’t crossed the line, not
where we could see ‘im do it,” said another.
“Nor yet ‘e ain’t made no pretences,”
said a third.
“And,” said the oldest workman, “‘e’s
outer sight now. What the eye don’t see
the ‘art needn’t take no notice of’s
what I always say.”
And now, following the track of the hare by
the little white blots of scattered paper,
came the hounds. There were thirty of them,
and they all came down the steep, ladder-like
steps by ones and twos and threes and sixes
and sevens. Bobbie and Phyllis and Peter counted
them as they passed. The foremost ones hesitated
a moment at the foot of the ladder, then their
eyes caught the gleam of scattered whiteness
along the line and they turned towards the
tunnel, and, by ones and twos and threes and
sixes and sevens, disappeared in the dark
mouth of it. The last one, in a red jersey,
seemed to be extinguished by the darkness
like a candle that is blown out.
“They don’t know what they’re in for,”
said the foreman; “it isn’t so easy running
in the dark. The tunnel takes two or three
turns.”
“They’ll take a long time to get through,
you think?” Peter asked.
“An hour or more, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Then let’s cut across the top and see
them come out at the other end,” said Peter;
“we shall get there long before they do.”
The counsel seemed good, and they went.
They climbed the steep steps from which they
had picked the wild cherry blossom for the
grave of the little wild rabbit, and reaching
the top of the cutting, set their faces towards
the hill through which the tunnel was cut.
It was stiff work.
“It’s like Alps,” said Bobbie, breathlessly.
“Or Andes,” said Peter.
“It’s like Himmy what’s its names?”
gasped Phyllis. “Mount Everlasting. Do let’s
stop.”
“Stick to it,” panted Peter; “you’ll
get your second wind in a minute.”
Phyllis consented to stick to it—and on
they went, running when the turf was smooth
and the slope easy, climbing over stones,
helping themselves up rocks by the branches
of trees, creeping through narrow openings
between tree trunks and rocks, and so on and
on, up and up, till at last they stood on
the very top of the hill where they had so
often wished to be.
“Halt!” cried Peter, and threw himself
flat on the grass. For the very top of the
hill was a smooth, turfed table-land, dotted
with mossy rocks and little mountain-ash trees.
The girls also threw themselves down flat.
“Plenty of time,” Peter panted; “the
rest’s all down hill.”
When they were rested enough to sit up and
look round them, Bobbie cried:—
“Oh, look!”
“What at?” said Phyllis.
“The view,” said Bobbie.
“I hate views,” said Phyllis, “don’t
you, Peter?”
“Let’s get on,” said Peter.
“But this isn’t like a view they take
you to in carriages when you’re at the seaside,
all sea and sand and bare hills. It’s like
the ‘coloured counties’ in one of Mother’s
poetry books.”
“It’s not so dusty,” said Peter; “look
at the Aqueduct straddling slap across the
valley like a giant centipede, and then the
towns sticking their church spires up out
of the trees like pens out of an inkstand.
I think it’s more like
“There could he see the banners
Of twelve fair cities shine.”
“I love it,” said Bobbie; “it’s worth
the climb.”
“The paperchase is worth the climb,” said
Phyllis, “if we don’t lose it. Let’s
get on. It’s all down hill now.”
“I said that ten minutes ago,” said Peter.
“Well, I’VE said it now,” said Phyllis;
“come on.”
“Loads of time,” said Peter. And there
was. For when they had got down to a level
with the top of the tunnel’s mouth—they
were a couple of hundred yards out of their
reckoning and had to creep along the face
of the hill—there was no sign of the hare
or the hounds.
“They’ve gone long ago, of course,”
said Phyllis, as they leaned on the brick
parapet above the tunnel.
“I don’t think so,” said Bobbie, “but
even if they had, it’s ripping here, and
we shall see the trains come out of the tunnel
like dragons out of lairs. We’ve never seen
that from the top side before.”
“No more we have,” said Phyllis, partially
appeased.
It was really a most exciting place to be
in. The top of the tunnel seemed ever so much
farther from the line than they had expected,
and it was like being on a bridge, but a bridge
overgrown with bushes and creepers and grass
and wild-flowers.
“I KNOW the paperchase has gone long ago,”
said Phyllis every two minutes, and she hardly
knew whether she was pleased or disappointed
when Peter, leaning over the parapet, suddenly
cried:—
“Look out. Here he comes!”
They all leaned over the sun-warmed brick
wall in time to see the hare, going very slowly,
come out from the shadow of the tunnel.
“There, now,” said Peter, “what did
I tell you? Now for the hounds!”
Very soon came the hounds—by ones and twos
and threes and sixes and sevens—and they
also were going slowly and seemed very tired.
Two or three who lagged far behind came out
long after the others.
“There,” said Bobbie, “that’s all—now
what shall we do?”
“Go along into the tulgy wood over there
and have lunch,” said Phyllis; “we can
see them for miles from up here.”
“Not yet,” said Peter. “That’s not
the last. There’s the one in the red jersey
to come yet. Let’s see the last of them
come out.”
But though they waited and waited and waited,
the boy in the red jersey did not appear.
“Oh, let’s have lunch,” said Phyllis;
“I’ve got a pain in my front with being
so hungry. You must have missed seeing the
red-jerseyed one when he came out with the
others—”
But Bobbie and Peter agreed that he had not
come out with the others.
“Let’s get down to the tunnel mouth,”
said Peter; “then perhaps we shall see him
coming along from the inside. I expect he
felt spun-chuck, and rested in one of the
manholes. You stay up here and watch, Bob,
and when I signal from below, you come down.
We might miss seeing him on the way down,
with all these trees.”
So the others climbed down and Bobbie waited
till they signalled to her from the line below.
And then she, too, scrambled down the roundabout
slippery path among roots and moss till she
stepped out between two dogwood trees and
joined the others on the line. And still there
was no sign of the hound with the red jersey.
“Oh, do, DO let’s have something to eat,”
wailed Phyllis. “I shall die if you don’t,
and then you’ll be sorry.”
“Give her the sandwiches, for goodness’
sake, and stop her silly mouth,” said Peter,
not quite unkindly. “Look here,” he added,
turning to Bobbie, “perhaps we’d better
have one each, too. We may need all our strength.
Not more than one, though. There’s no time.”
“What?” asked Bobbie, her mouth already
full, for she was just as hungry as Phyllis.
“Don’t you see,” replied Peter, impressively,
“that red-jerseyed hound has had an accident—that’s
what it is. Perhaps even as we speak he’s
lying with his head on the metals, an unresisting
prey to any passing express—”
“Oh, don’t try to talk like a book,”
cried Bobbie, bolting what was left of her
sandwich; “come on. Phil, keep close behind
me, and if a train comes, stand flat against
the tunnel wall and hold your petticoats close
to you.”
“Give me one more sandwich,” pleaded Phyllis,
“and I will.”
“I’m going first,” said Peter; “it
was my idea,” and he went.
Of course you know what going into a tunnel
is like? The engine gives a scream and then
suddenly the noise of the running, rattling
train changes and grows different and much
louder. Grown-up people pull up the windows
and hold them by the strap. The railway carriage
suddenly grows like night—with lamps, of
course, unless you are in a slow local train,
in which case lamps are not always provided.
Then by and by the darkness outside the carriage
window is touched by puffs of cloudy whiteness,
then you see a blue light on the walls of
the tunnel, then the sound of the moving train
changes once more, and you are out in the
good open air again, and grown-ups let the
straps go. The windows, all dim with the yellow
breath of the tunnel, rattle down into their
places, and you see once more the dip and
catch of the telegraph wires beside the line,
and the straight-cut hawthorn hedges with
the tiny baby trees growing up out of them
every thirty yards.
All this, of course, is what a tunnel means
when you are in a train. But everything is
quite different when you walk into a tunnel
on your own feet, and tread on shifting, sliding
stones and gravel on a path that curves downwards
from the shining metals to the wall. Then
you see slimy, oozy trickles of water running
down the inside of the tunnel, and you notice
that the bricks are not red or brown, as they
are at the tunnel’s mouth, but dull, sticky,
sickly green. Your voice, when you speak,
is quite changed from what it was out in the
sunshine, and it is a long time before the
tunnel is quite dark.
It was not yet quite dark in the tunnel when
Phyllis caught at Bobbie’s skirt, ripping
out half a yard of gathers, but no one noticed
this at the time.
“I want to go back,” she said, “I don’t
like it. It’ll be pitch dark in a minute.
I WON’T go on in the dark. I don’t care
what you say, I WON’T.”
“Don’t be a silly cuckoo,” said Peter;
“I’ve got a candle end and matches, and—what’s
that?”
“That” was a low, humming sound on the
railway line, a trembling of the wires beside
it, a buzzing, humming sound that grew louder
and louder as they listened.
“It’s a train,” said Bobbie.
“Which line?”
“Let me go back,” cried Phyllis, struggling
to get away from the hand by which Bobbie
held her.
“Don’t be a coward,” said Bobbie; “it’s
quite safe. Stand back.”
“Come on,” shouted Peter, who was a few
yards ahead. “Quick! Manhole!”
The roar of the advancing train was now louder
than the noise you hear when your head is
under water in the bath and both taps are
running, and you are kicking with your heels
against the bath’s tin sides. But Peter
had shouted for all he was worth, and Bobbie
heard him. She dragged Phyllis along to the
manhole. Phyllis, of course, stumbled over
the wires and grazed both her legs. But they
dragged her in, and all three stood in the
dark, damp, arched recess while the train
roared louder and louder. It seemed as if
it would deafen them. And, in the distance,
they could see its eyes of fire growing bigger
and brighter every instant.
“It IS a dragon—I always knew it was—it
takes its own shape in here, in the dark,”
shouted Phyllis. But nobody heard her. You
see the train was shouting, too, and its voice
was bigger than hers.
And now, with a rush and a roar and a rattle
and a long dazzling flash of lighted carriage
windows, a smell of smoke, and blast of hot
air, the train hurtled by, clanging and jangling
and echoing in the vaulted roof of the tunnel.
Phyllis and Bobbie clung to each other. Even
Peter caught hold of Bobbie’s arm, “in
case she should be frightened,” as he explained
afterwards.
And now, slowly and gradually, the tail-lights
grew smaller and smaller, and so did the noise,
till with one last WHIZ the train got itself
out of the tunnel, and silence settled again
on its damp walls and dripping roof.
“OH!” said the children, all together
in a whisper.
Peter was lighting the candle end with a hand
that trembled.
“Come on,” he said; but he had to clear
his throat before he could speak in his natural
voice.
“Oh,” said Phyllis, “if the red-jerseyed
one was in the way of the train!”
“We’ve got to go and see,” said Peter.
“Couldn’t we go and send someone from
the station?” said Phyllis.
“Would you rather wait here for us?” asked
Bobbie, severely, and of course that settled
the question.
So the three went on into the deeper darkness
of the tunnel. Peter led, holding his candle
end high to light the way. The grease ran
down his fingers, and some of it right up
his sleeve. He found a long streak from wrist
to elbow when he went to bed that night.
It was not more than a hundred and fifty yards
from the spot where they had stood while the
train went by that Peter stood still, shouted
“Hullo,” and then went on much quicker
than before. When the others caught him up,
he stopped. And he stopped within a yard of
what they had come into the tunnel to look
for. Phyllis saw a gleam of red, and shut
her eyes tight. There, by the curved, pebbly
down line, was the red-jerseyed hound. His
back was against the wall, his arms hung limply
by his sides, and his eyes were shut.
“Was the red, blood? Is he all killed?”
asked Phyllis, screwing her eyelids more tightly
together.
“Killed? Nonsense!” said Peter. “There’s
nothing red about him except his jersey. He’s
only fainted. What on earth are we to do?”
“Can we move him?” asked Bobbie.
“I don’t know; he’s a big chap.”
“Suppose we bathe his forehead with water.
No, I know we haven’t any, but milk’s
just as wet. There’s a whole bottle.”
“Yes,” said Peter, “and they rub people’s
hands, I believe.”
“They burn feathers, I know,” said Phyllis.
“What’s the good of saying that when we
haven’t any feathers?”
“As it happens,” said Phyllis, in a tone
of exasperated triumph, “I’ve got a shuttlecock
in my pocket. So there!”
And now Peter rubbed the hands of the red-jerseyed
one. Bobbie burned the feathers of the shuttlecock
one by one under his nose, Phyllis splashed
warmish milk on his forehead, and all three
kept on saying as fast 
and as earnestly as they could:—
“Oh, look up, speak to me! For my sake,
speak!”
Chapter XII. What Bobbie brought home.
“Oh, look up! Speak to me! For MY sake,
speak!” The children said the words over
and over again to the unconscious hound in
a red jersey, who sat with closed eyes and
pale face against the side of the tunnel.
“Wet his ears with milk,” said Bobbie.
“I know they do it to people that faint—with
eau-de-Cologne. But I expect milk’s just
as good.”
So they wetted his ears, and some of the milk
ran down his neck under the red jersey. It
was very dark in the tunnel. The candle end
Peter had carried, and which now burned on
a flat stone, gave hardly any light at all.
“Oh, DO look up,” said Phyllis. “For
MY sake! I believe he’s dead.”
“For MY sake,” repeated Bobbie. “No,
he isn’t.”
“For ANY sake,” said Peter; “come out
of it.” And he shook the sufferer by the
arm.
And then the boy in the red jersey sighed,
and opened his eyes, and shut them again and
said in a very small voice, “Chuck it.”
“Oh, he’s NOT dead,” said Phyllis. “I
KNEW he wasn’t,” and she began to cry.
“What’s up? I’m all right,” said the
boy.
“Drink this,” said Peter, firmly, thrusting
the nose of the milk bottle into the boy’s
mouth. The boy struggled, and some of the
milk was upset before he could get his mouth
free to say:—
“What is it?”
“It’s milk,” said Peter. “Fear not,
you are in the hands of friends. Phil, you
stop bleating this minute.”
“Do drink it,” said Bobbie, gently; “it’ll
do you good.”
So he drank. And the three stood by without
speaking to him.
“Let him be a minute,” Peter whispered;
“he’ll be all right as soon as the milk
begins to run like fire through his veins.”
He was.
“I’m better now,” he announced. “I
remember all about it.” He tried to move,
but the movement ended in a groan. “Bother!
I believe I’ve broken my leg,” he said.
“Did you tumble down?” asked Phyllis,
sniffing.
“Of course not—I’m not a kiddie,”
said the boy, indignantly; “it was one of
those beastly wires tripped me up, and when
I tried to get up again I couldn’t stand,
so I sat down. Gee whillikins! it does hurt,
though. How did YOU get here?”
“We saw you all go into the tunnel and then
we went across the hill to see you all come
out. And the others did—all but you, and
you didn’t. So we are a rescue party,”
said Peter, with pride.
“You’ve got some pluck, I will say,”
remarked the boy.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Peter, with
modesty. “Do you think you could walk if
we helped you?”
“I could try,” said the boy.
He did try. But he could only stand on one
foot; the other dragged in a very nasty way.
“Here, let me sit down. I feel like dying,”
said the boy. “Let go of me—let go, quick—”
He lay down and closed his eyes. The others
looked at each other by the dim light of the
little candle.
“What on earth!” said Peter.
“Look here,” said Bobbie, quickly, “you
must go and get help. Go to the nearest house.”
“Yes, that’s the only thing,” said Peter.
“Come on.”
“If you take his feet and Phil and I take
his head, we could carry him to the manhole.”
They did it. It was perhaps as well for the
sufferer that he had fainted again.
“Now,” said Bobbie, “I’ll stay with
him. You take the longest bit of candle, and,
oh—be quick, for this bit won’t burn long.”
“I don’t think Mother would like me leaving
you,” said Peter, doubtfully. “Let me
stay, and you and Phil go.”
“No, no,” said Bobbie, “you and Phil
go—and lend me your knife. I’ll try to
get his boot off before he wakes up again.”
“I hope it’s all right what we’re doing,”
said Peter.
“Of course it’s right,” said Bobbie,
impatiently. “What else WOULD you do? Leave
him here all alone because it’s dark? Nonsense.
Hurry up, that’s all.”
So they hurried up.
Bobbie watched their dark figures and the
little light of the little candle with an
odd feeling of having come to the end of everything.
She knew now, she thought, what nuns who were
bricked up alive in convent walls felt like.
Suddenly she gave herself a little shake.
“Don’t be a silly little girl,” she
said. She was always very angry when anyone
else called her a little girl, even if the
adjective that went first was not “silly”
but “nice” or “good” or “clever.”
And it was only when she was very angry with
herself that she allowed Roberta to use that
expression to Bobbie.
She fixed the little candle end on a broken
brick near the red-jerseyed boy’s feet.
Then she opened Peter’s knife. It was always
hard to manage—a halfpenny was generally
needed to get it open at all. This time Bobbie
somehow got it open with her thumbnail. She
broke the nail, and it hurt horribly. Then
she cut the boy’s bootlace, and got the
boot off. She tried to pull off his stocking,
but his leg was dreadfully swollen, and it
did not seem to be the proper shape. So she
cut the stocking down, very slowly and carefully.
It was a brown, knitted stocking, and she
wondered who had knitted it, and whether it
was the boy’s mother, and whether she was
feeling anxious about him, and how she would
feel when he was brought home with his leg
broken. When Bobbie had got the stocking off
and saw the poor leg, she felt as though the
tunnel was growing darker, and the ground
felt unsteady, and nothing seemed quite real.
“SILLY little girl!” said Roberta to Bobbie,
and felt better.
“The poor leg,” she told herself; “it
ought to have a cushion—ah!”
She remembered the day when she and Phyllis
had torn up their red flannel petticoats to
make danger signals to stop the train and
prevent an accident. Her flannel petticoat
to-day was white, but it would be quite as
soft as a red one. She took it off.
“Oh, what useful things flannel petticoats
are!” she said; “the man who invented
them ought to have a statue directed to him.”
And she said it aloud, because it seemed that
any voice, even her own, would be a comfort
in that darkness.
“WHAT ought to be directed? Who to?” asked
the boy, suddenly and very feebly.
“Oh,” said Bobbie, “now you’re better!
Hold your teeth and don’t let it hurt too
much. Now!”
She had folded the petticoat, and lifting
his leg laid it on the cushion of folded flannel.
“Don’t faint again, PLEASE don’t,”
said Bobbie, as he groaned. She hastily wetted
her handkerchief with milk and spread it over
the poor leg.
“Oh, that hurts,” cried the boy, shrinking.
“Oh—no, it doesn’t—it’s nice, really.”
“What’s your name?” said Bobbie.
“Jim.”
“Mine’s Bobbie.”
“But you’re a girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my long name’s Roberta.”
“I say—Bobbie.”
“Yes?”
“Wasn’t there some more of you just now?”
“Yes, Peter and Phil—that’s my brother
and sister. They’ve gone to get someone
to carry you out.”
“What rum names. All boys’.”
“Yes—I wish I was a boy, don’t you?”
“I think you’re all right as you are.”
“I didn’t mean that—I meant don’t
you wish YOU were a boy, but of course you
are without wishing.”
“You’re just as brave as a boy. Why didn’t
you go with the others?”
“Somebody had to stay with you,” said
Bobbie.
“Tell you what, Bobbie,” said Jim, “you’re
a brick. Shake.” He reached out a red-jerseyed
arm and Bobbie squeezed his hand.
“I won’t shake it,” she explained, “because
it would shake YOU, and that would shake your
poor leg, and that would hurt. Have you got
a hanky?”
“I don’t expect I have.” He felt in
his pocket. “Yes, I have. What for?”
She took it and wetted it with milk and put
it on his forehead.
“That’s jolly,” he said; “what is
it?”
“Milk,” said Bobbie. “We haven’t any
water—”
“You’re a jolly good little nurse,”
said Jim.
“I do it for Mother sometimes,” said Bobbie—“not
milk, of course, but scent, or vinegar and
water. I say, I must put the candle out now,
because there mayn’t be enough of the other
one to get you out by.”
“By George,” said he, “you think of
everything.”
Bobbie blew. Out went the candle. You have
no idea how black-velvety the darkness was.
“I say, Bobbie,” said a voice through
the blackness, “aren’t you afraid of the
dark?”
“Not—not very, that is—”
“Let’s hold hands,” said the boy, and
it was really rather good of him, because
he was like most boys of his age and hated
all material tokens of affection, such as
kissing and holding of hands. He called all
such things “pawings,” and detested them.
The darkness was more bearable to Bobbie now
that her hand was held in the large rough
hand of the red-jerseyed sufferer; and he,
holding her little smooth hot paw, was surprised
to find that he did not mind it so much as
he expected. She tried to talk, to amuse him,
and “take his mind off” his sufferings,
but it is very difficult to go on talking
in the dark, and presently they found themselves
in a silence, only broken now and then by
a—
“You all right, Bobbie?”
or an—
“I’m afraid it’s hurting you most awfully,
Jim. I AM so sorry.”
And it was very cold.
* * * * * *
Peter and Phyllis tramped down the long way
of the tunnel towards daylight, the candle-grease
dripping over Peter’s fingers. There were
no accidents unless you count Phyllis’s
catching her frock on a wire, and tearing
a long, jagged slit in it, and tripping over
her bootlace when it came undone, or going
down on her hands and knees, all four of which
were grazed.
“There’s no end to this tunnel,” said
Phyllis—and indeed it did seem very very
long.
“Stick to it,” said Peter; “everything
has an end, and you get to it if you only
keep all on.”
Which is quite true, if you come to think
of it, and a useful thing to remember in seasons
of trouble—such as measles, arithmetic,
impositions, and those times when you are
in disgrace, and feel as though no one would
ever love you again, and you could never—never
again—love anybody.
“Hurray,” said Peter, suddenly, “there’s
the end of the tunnel—looks just like a
pin-hole in a bit of black paper, doesn’t
it?”
The pin-hole got larger—blue lights lay
along the sides of the tunnel. The children
could see the gravel way that lay in front
of them; the air grew warmer and sweeter.
Another twenty steps and they were out in
the good glad sunshine with the green trees
on both sides.
Phyllis drew a long breath.
“I’ll never go into a tunnel again as
long as ever I live,” said she, “not if
there are twenty hundred thousand millions
hounds inside with red jerseys and their legs
broken.”
“Don’t be a silly cuckoo,” said Peter,
as usual. “You’d HAVE to.”
“I think it was very brave and good of me,”
said Phyllis.
“Not it,” said Peter; “you didn’t
go because you were brave, but because Bobbie
and I aren’t skunks. Now where’s the nearest
house, I wonder? You can’t see anything
here for the trees.”
“There’s a roof over there,” said Phyllis,
pointing down the line.
“That’s the signal-box,” said Peter,
“and you know you’re not allowed to speak
to signalmen on duty. It’s wrong.”
“I’m not near so afraid of doing wrong
as I was of going into that tunnel,” said
Phyllis. “Come on,” and she started to
run along the line. So Peter ran, too.
It was very hot in the sunshine, and both
children were hot and breathless by the time
they stopped, and bending their heads back
to look up at the open windows of the signal-box,
shouted “Hi!” as loud as their breathless
state allowed. But no one answered. The signal-box
stood quiet as an empty nursery, and the handrail
of its steps was hot to the hands of the children
as they climbed softly up. They peeped in
at the open door. The signalman was sitting
on a chair tilted back against the wall. His
head leaned sideways, and his mouth was open.
He was fast asleep.
“My hat!” cried Peter; “wake up!”
And he cried it in a terrible voice, for he
knew that if a signalman sleeps on duty, he
risks losing his situation, let alone all
the other dreadful risks to trains which expect
him to tell them when it is safe for them
to go their ways.
The signalman never moved. Then Peter sprang
to him and shook him. And slowly, yawning
and stretching, the man awoke. But the moment
he WAS awake he leapt to his feet, put his
hands to his head “like a mad maniac,”
as Phyllis said afterwards, and shouted:—
“Oh, my heavens—what’s o’clock?”
“Twelve thirteen,” said Peter, and indeed
it was by the white-faced, round-faced clock
on the wall of the signal-box.
The man looked at the clock, sprang to the
levers, and wrenched them this way and that.
An electric bell tingled—the wires and cranks
creaked, and the man threw himself into a
chair. He was very pale, and the sweat stood
on his forehead “like large dewdrops on
a white cabbage,” as Phyllis remarked later.
He was trembling, too; the children could
see his big hairy hands shake from side to
side, “with quite extra-sized trembles,”
to use the subsequent words of Peter. He drew
long breaths. Then suddenly he cried, “Thank
God, thank God you come in when you did—oh,
thank God!” and his shoulders began to heave
and his face grew red again, and he hid it
in those large hairy hands of his.
“Oh, don’t cry—don’t,” said Phyllis,
“it’s all right now,” and she patted
him on one big, broad shoulder, while Peter
conscientiously thumped the other.
But the signalman seemed quite broken down,
and the children had to pat him and thump
him for quite a long time before he found
his handkerchief—a red one with mauve and
white horseshoes on it—and mopped his face
and spoke. During this patting and thumping
interval a train thundered by.
“I’m downright shamed, that I am,” were
the words of the big signalman when he had
stopped crying; “snivelling like a kid.”
Then suddenly he seemed to get cross. “And
what was you doing up here, anyway?” he
said; “you know it ain’t allowed.”
“Yes,” said Phyllis, “we knew it was
wrong—but I wasn’t afraid of doing wrong,
and so it turned out right. You aren’t sorry
we came.”
“Lor’ love you—if you hadn’t ‘a’
come—” he stopped and then went on. “It’s
a disgrace, so it is, sleeping on duty. If
it was to come to be known—even as it is,
when no harm’s come of it.”
“It won’t come to be known,” said Peter;
“we aren’t sneaks. All the same, you oughtn’t
to sleep on duty—it’s dangerous.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” said
the man, “but I can’t help it. I know’d
well enough just how it ‘ud be. But I couldn’t
get off. They couldn’t get no one to take
on my duty. I tell you I ain’t had ten minutes’
sleep this last five days. My little chap’s
ill—pewmonia, the Doctor says—and there’s
no one but me and ‘is little sister to do
for him. That’s where it is. The gell must
‘ave her sleep. Dangerous? Yes, I believe
you. Now go and split on me if you like.”
“Of course we won’t,” said Peter, indignantly,
but Phyllis ignored the whole of the signalman’s
speech, except the first six words.
“You asked us,” she said, “to tell you
something you don’t know. Well, I will.
There’s a boy in the tunnel over there with
a red jersey and his leg broken.”
“What did he want to go into the blooming
tunnel for, then?” said the man.
“Don’t you be so cross,” said Phyllis,
kindly. “WE haven’t done anything wrong
except coming and waking you up, and that
was right, as it happens.”
Then Peter told how the boy came to be in
the tunnel.
“Well,” said the man, “I don’t see
as I can do anything. I can’t leave the
box.”
“You might tell us where to go after someone
who isn’t in a box, though,” said Phyllis.
“There’s Brigden’s farm over yonder—where
you see the smoke a-coming up through the
trees,” said the man, more and more grumpy,
as Phyllis noticed.
“Well, good-bye, then,” said Peter.
But the man said, “Wait a minute.” He
put his hand in his pocket and brought out
some money—a lot of pennies and one or two
shillings and sixpences and half-a-crown.
He picked out two shillings and held them
out.
“Here,” he said. “I’ll give you this
to hold your tongues about what’s taken
place to-day.”
There was a short, unpleasant pause. Then:—
“You ARE a nasty man, though, aren’t you?”
said Phyllis.
Peter took a step forward and knocked the
man’s hand up, so that the shillings leapt
out of it and rolled on the floor.
“If anything COULD make me sneak, THAT would!”
he said. “Come, Phil,” and marched out
of the signal-box with flaming cheeks.
Phyllis hesitated. Then she took the hand,
still held out stupidly, that the shillings
had been in.
“I forgive you,” she said, “even if
Peter doesn’t. You’re not in your proper
senses, or you’d never have done that. I
know want of sleep sends people mad. Mother
told me. I hope your little boy will soon
be better, and—”
“Come on, Phil,” cried Peter, eagerly.
“I give you my sacred honour-word we’ll
never tell anyone. Kiss and be friends,”
said Phyllis, feeling how noble it was of
her to try to make up a quarrel in which she
was not to blame.
The signalman stooped and kissed her.
“I do believe I’m a bit off my head, Sissy,”
he said. “Now run along home to Mother.
I didn’t mean to put you about—there.”
So Phil left the hot signal-box and followed
Peter across the fields to the farm.
When the farm men, led by Peter and Phyllis
and carrying a hurdle covered with horse-cloths,
reached the manhole in the tunnel, Bobbie
was fast asleep and so was Jim. Worn out with
the pain, the Doctor said afterwards.
“Where does he live?” the bailiff from
the farm asked, when Jim had been lifted on
to the hurdle.
“In Northumberland,” answered Bobbie.
“I’m at school at Maidbridge,” said
Jim. “I suppose I’ve got to get back there,
somehow.”
“Seems to me the Doctor ought to have a
look in first,” said the bailiff.
“Oh, bring him up to our house,” said
Bobbie. “It’s only a little way by the
road. I’m sure Mother would say we ought
to.”
“Will your Ma like you bringing home strangers
with broken legs?”
“She took the poor Russian home herself,”
said Bobbie. “I know she’d say we ought.”
“All right,” said the bailiff, “you
ought to know what your Ma ‘ud like. I wouldn’t
take it upon me to fetch him up to our place
without I asked the Missus first, and they
call me the Master, too.”
“Are you sure your Mother won’t mind?”
whispered Jim.
“Certain,” said Bobbie.
“Then we’re to take him up to Three Chimneys?”
said the bailiff.
“Of course,” said Peter.
“Then my lad shall nip up to Doctor’s
on his bike, and tell him to come down there.
Now, lads, lift him quiet and steady. One,
two, three!”
* * * * * *
Thus it happened that Mother, writing away
for dear life at a story about a Duchess,
a designing villain, a secret passage, and
a missing will, dropped her pen as her work-room
door burst open, and turned to see Bobbie
hatless and red with running.
“Oh, Mother,” she cried, “do come down.
We found a hound in a red jersey in the tunnel,
and he’s broken his leg and they’re bringing
him home.”
“They ought to take him to the vet,” said
Mother, with a worried frown; “I really
CAN’T have a lame dog here.”
“He’s not a dog, really—he’s a boy,”
said Bobbie, between laughing and choking.
“Then he ought to be taken home to his mother.”
“His mother’s dead,” said Bobbie, “and
his father’s in Northumberland. Oh, Mother,
you will be nice to him? I told him I was
sure you’d want us to bring him home. You
always want to help everybody.”
Mother smiled, but she sighed, too. It is
nice that your children should believe you
willing to open house and heart to any and
every one who needs help. But it is rather
embarrassing sometimes, too, when they act
on their belief.
“Oh, well,” said Mother, “we must make
the best of it.”
When Jim was carried in, dreadfully white
and with set lips whose red had faded to a
horrid bluey violet colour, Mother said:—
“I am glad you brought him here. Now, Jim,
let’s get you comfortable in bed before
the Doctor comes!”
And Jim, looking at her kind eyes, felt a
little, warm, comforting flush of new courage.
“It’ll hurt rather, won’t it?” he
said. “I don’t mean to be a coward. You
won’t think I’m a coward if I faint again,
will you? I really and truly don’t do it
on purpose. And I do hate to give you all
this trouble.”
“Don’t you worry,” said Mother; “it’s
you that have the trouble, you poor dear—not
us.”
And she kissed him just as if he had been
Peter. “We love to have you here—don’t
we, Bobbie?”
“Yes,” said Bobbie—and she saw by her
Mother’s face how right she had been to
bring home the wounded hound in the red jersey.
Chapter XIII. The hound’s grandfather.
Mother did not get back to her writing all
that day, for the red-jerseyed hound whom
the children had brought to Three Chimneys
had to be put to bed. And then the Doctor
came, and hurt him most horribly. Mother was
with him all through it, and that made it
a little better than it would have been, but
“bad was the best,” as Mrs. Viney said.
The children sat in the parlour downstairs
and heard the sound of the Doctor’s boots
going backwards and forwards over the bedroom
floor. And once or twice there was a groan.
“It’s horrible,” said Bobbie. “Oh,
I wish Dr. Forrest would make haste. Oh, poor
Jim!”
“It IS horrible,” said Peter, “but it’s
very exciting. I wish Doctors weren’t so
stuck-up about who they’ll have in the room
when they’re doing things. I should most
awfully like to see a leg set. I believe the
bones crunch like anything.”
“Don’t!” said the two girls at once.
“Rubbish!” said Peter. “How are you
going to be Red Cross Nurses, like you were
talking of coming home, if you can’t even
stand hearing me say about bones crunching?
You’d have to HEAR them crunch on the field
of battle—and be steeped in gore up to the
elbows as likely as not, and—”
“Stop it!” cried Bobbie, with a white
face; “you don’t know how funny you’re
making me feel.”
“Me, too,” said Phyllis, whose face was
pink.
“Cowards!” said Peter.
“I’m not,” said Bobbie. “I helped
Mother with your rake-wounded foot, and so
did Phil—you know we did.”
“Well, then!” said Peter. “Now look
here. It would be a jolly good thing for you
if I were to talk to you every day for half
an hour about broken bones and people’s
insides, so as to get you used to it.”
A chair was moved above.
“Listen,” said Peter, “that’s the
bone crunching.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t,” said Phyllis.
“Bobbie doesn’t like it.”
“I’ll tell you what they do,” said Peter.
I can’t think what made him so horrid. Perhaps
it was because he had been so very nice and
kind all the earlier part of the day, and
now he had to have a change. This is called
reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself.
Sometimes when one has been extra good for
a longer time than usual, one is suddenly
attacked by a violent fit of not being good
at all. “I’ll tell you what they do,”
said Peter; “they strap the broken man down
so that he can’t resist or interfere with
their doctorish designs, and then someone
holds his head, and someone holds his leg—the
broken one, and pulls it till the bones fit
in—with a crunch, mind you! Then they strap
it up and—let’s play at bone-setting!”
“Oh, no!” said Phyllis.
But Bobbie said suddenly: “All right—LET’S!
I’ll be the doctor, and Phil can be the
nurse. You can be the broken boner; we can
get at your legs more easily, because you
don’t wear petticoats.”
“I’ll get the splints and bandages,”
said Peter; “you get the couch of suffering
ready.”
The ropes that had tied up the boxes that
had come from home were all in a wooden packing-case
in the cellar. When Peter brought in a trailing
tangle of them, and two boards for splints,
Phyllis was excitedly giggling.
“Now, then,” he said, and lay down on
the settle, groaning most grievously.
“Not so loud!” said Bobbie, beginning
to wind the rope round him and the settle.
“You pull, Phil.”
“Not so tight,” moaned Peter. “You’ll
break my other leg.”
Bobbie worked on in silence, winding more
and more rope round him.
“That’s enough,” said Peter. “I can’t
move at all. Oh, my poor leg!” He groaned
again.
“SURE you can’t move?” asked Bobbie,
in a rather strange tone.
“Quite sure,” replied Peter. “Shall
we play it’s bleeding freely or not?”
he asked cheerfully.
“YOU can play what you like,” said Bobbie,
sternly, folding her arms and looking down
at him where he lay all wound round and round
with cord. “Phil and I are going away. And
we shan’t untie you till you promise never,
never to talk to us about blood and wounds
unless we say you may. Come, Phil!”
“You beast!” said Peter, writhing. “I’ll
never promise, never. I’ll yell, and Mother
will come.”
“Do,” said Bobbie, “and tell her why
we tied you up! Come on, Phil. No, I’m not
a beast, Peter. But you wouldn’t stop when
we asked you and—”
“Yah,” said Peter, “it wasn’t even
your own idea. You got it out of Stalky!”
Bobbie and Phil, retiring in silent dignity,
were met at the door by the Doctor. He came
in rubbing his hands and looking pleased with
himself.
“Well,” he said, “THAT job’s done.
It’s a nice clean fracture, and it’ll
go on all right, I’ve no doubt. Plucky young
chap, too—hullo! what’s all this?”
His eye had fallen on Peter who lay mousy-still
in his bonds on the settle.
“Playing at prisoners, eh?” he said; but
his eyebrows had gone up a little. Somehow
he had not thought that Bobbie would be playing
while in the room above someone was having
a broken bone set.
“Oh, no!” said Bobbie, “not at PRISONERS.
We were playing at setting bones. Peter’s
the broken boner, and I was the doctor.”
The Doctor frowned.
“Then I must say,” he said, and he said
it rather sternly, “that’s it’s a very
heartless game. Haven’t you enough imagination
even to faintly picture what’s been going
on upstairs? That poor chap, with the drops
of sweat on his forehead, and biting his lips
so as not to cry out, and every touch on his
leg agony and—”
“YOU ought to be tied up,” said Phyllis;
“you’re as bad as—”
“Hush,” said Bobbie; “I’m sorry, but
we weren’t heartless, really.”
“I was, I suppose,” said Peter, crossly.
“All right, Bobbie, don’t you go on being
noble and screening me, because I jolly well
won’t have it. It was only that I kept on
talking about blood and wounds. I wanted to
train them for Red Cross Nurses. And I wouldn’t
stop when they asked me.”
“Well?” said Dr. Forrest, sitting down.
“Well—then I said, ‘Let’s play at
setting bones.’ It was all rot. I knew Bobbie
wouldn’t. I only said it to tease her. And
then when she said ‘yes,’ of course I
had to go through with it. And they tied me
up. They got it out of Stalky. And I think
it’s a beastly shame.”
He managed to writhe over and hide his face
against the wooden back of the settle.
“I didn’t think that anyone would know
but us,” said Bobbie, indignantly answering
Peter’s unspoken reproach. “I never thought
of your coming in. And hearing about blood
and wounds does really make me feel most awfully
funny. It was only a joke our tying him up.
Let me untie you, Pete.”
“I don’t care if you never untie me,”
said Peter; “and if that’s your idea of
a joke—”
“If I were you,” said the Doctor, though
really he did not quite know what to say,
“I should be untied before your Mother comes
down. You don’t want to worry her just now,
do you?”
“I don’t promise anything about not saying
about wounds, mind,” said Peter, in very
surly tones, as Bobbie and Phyllis began to
untie the knots.
“I’m very sorry, Pete,” Bobbie whispered,
leaning close to him as she fumbled with the
big knot under the settle; “but if you only
knew how sick you made me feel.”
“You’ve made ME feel pretty sick, I can
tell you,” Peter rejoined. Then he shook
off the loose cords, and stood up.
“I looked in,” said Dr. Forrest, “to
see if one of you would come along to the
surgery. There are some things that your Mother
will want at once, and I’ve given my man
a day off to go and see the circus; will you
come, Peter?”
Peter went without a word or a look to his
sisters.
The two walked in silence up to the gate that
led from the Three Chimneys field to the road.
Then Peter said:—
“Let me carry your bag. I say, it is heavy—what’s
in it?”
“Oh, knives and lancets and different instruments
for hurting people. And the ether bottle.
I had to give him ether, you know—the agony
was so intense.”
Peter was silent.
“Tell me all about how you found that chap,”
said Dr. Forrest.
Peter told. And then Dr. Forrest told him
stories of brave rescues; he was a most interesting
man to talk to, as Peter had often remarked.
Then in the surgery Peter had a better chance
than he had ever had of examining the Doctor’s
balance, and his microscope, and his scales
and measuring glasses. When all the things
were ready that Peter was to take back, the
Doctor said suddenly:—
“You’ll excuse my shoving my oar in, won’t
you? But I should like to say something to
you.”
“Now for a rowing,” thought Peter, who
had been wondering how it was that he had
escaped one.
“Something scientific,” added the Doctor.
“Yes,” said Peter, fiddling with the fossil
ammonite that the Doctor used for a paper-weight.
“Well then, you see. Boys and girls are
only little men and women. And WE are much
harder and hardier than they are—” (Peter
liked the “we.” Perhaps the Doctor had
known he would.)—“and much stronger, and
things that hurt THEM don’t hurt US. You
know you mustn’t hit a girl—”
“I should think not, indeed,” muttered
Peter, indignantly.
“Not even if she’s your own sister. That’s
because girls are so much softer and weaker
than we are; they have to be, you know,”
he added, “because if they weren’t, it
wouldn’t be nice for the babies. And that’s
why all the animals are so good to the mother
animals. They never fight them, you know.”
“I know,” said Peter, interested; “two
buck rabbits will fight all day if you let
them, but they won’t hurt a doe.”
“No; and quite wild beasts—lions and elephants—they’re
immensely gentle with the female beasts. And
we’ve got to be, too.”
“I see,” said Peter.
“And their hearts are soft, too,” the
Doctor went on, “and things that we shouldn’t
think anything of hurt them dreadfully. So
that a man has to be very careful, not only
of his fists, but of his words. They’re
awfully brave, you know,” he went on. “Think
of Bobbie waiting alone in the tunnel with
that poor chap. It’s an odd thing—the
softer and more easily hurt a woman is the
better she can screw herself up to do what
HAS to be done. I’ve seen some brave women—your
Mother’s one,” he ended abruptly.
“Yes,” said Peter.
“Well, that’s all. Excuse my mentioning
it. But nobody knows everything without being
told. And you see what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Peter. “I’m sorry. There!”
“Of course you are! People always are—directly
they understand. Everyone ought to be taught
these scientific facts. So long!”
They shook hands heartily. When Peter came
home, his sisters looked at him doubtfully.
“It’s Pax,” said Peter, dumping down
the basket on the table. “Dr. Forrest has
been talking scientific to me. No, it’s
no use my telling you what he said; you wouldn’t
understand. But it all comes to you girls
being poor, soft, weak, frightened things
like rabbits, so us men have just got to put
up with them. He said you were female beasts.
Shall I take this up to Mother, or will you?”
“I know what BOYS are,” said Phyllis,
with flaming cheeks; “they’re just the
nastiest, rudest—”
“They’re very brave,” said Bobbie, “sometimes.”
“Ah, you mean the chap upstairs? I see.
Go ahead, Phil—I shall put up with you whatever
you say because you’re a poor, weak, frightened,
soft—”
“Not if I pull your hair you won’t,”
said Phyllis, springing at him.
“He said ‘Pax,’” said Bobbie, pulling
her away. “Don’t you see,” she whispered
as Peter picked up the basket and stalked
out with it, “he’s sorry, really, only
he won’t say so? Let’s say we’re sorry.”
“It’s so goody goody,” said Phyllis,
doubtfully; “he said we were female beasts,
and soft and frightened—”
“Then let’s show him we’re not frightened
of him thinking us goody goody,” said Bobbie;
“and we’re not any more beasts than he
is.”
And when Peter came back, still with his chin
in the air, Bobbie said:—
“We’re sorry we tied you up, Pete.”
“I thought you would be,” said Peter,
very stiff and superior.
This was hard to bear. But—
“Well, so we are,” said Bobbie. “Now
let honour be satisfied on both sides.”
“I did call it Pax,” said Peter, in an
injured tone.
“Then let it BE Pax,” said Bobbie. “Come
on, Phil, let’s get the tea. Pete, you might
lay the cloth.”
“I say,” said Phyllis, when peace was
really restored, which was not till they were
washing up the cups after tea, “Dr. Forrest
didn’t REALLY say we were female beasts,
did he?”
“Yes,” said Peter, firmly, “but I think
he meant we men were wild beasts, too.”
“How funny of him!” said Phyllis, breaking
a cup.
* * * * * *
“May I come in, Mother?” Peter was at
the door of Mother’s writing room, where
Mother sat at her table with two candles in
front of her. Their flames looked orange and
violet against the clear grey blue of the
sky where already a few stars were twinkling.
“Yes, dear,” said Mother, absently, “anything
wrong?” She wrote a few more words and then
laid down her pen and began to fold up what
she had written. “I was just writing to
Jim’s grandfather. He lives near here, you
know.”
“Yes, you said so at tea. That’s what
I want to say. Must you write to him, Mother?
Couldn’t we keep Jim, and not say anything
to his people till he’s well? It would be
such a surprise for them.”
“Well, yes,” said Mother, laughing, “I
think it would.”
“You see,” Peter went on, “of course
the girls are all right and all that—I’m
not saying anything against THEM. But I should
like it if I had another chap to talk to sometimes.”
“Yes,” said Mother, “I know it’s dull
for you, dear. But I can’t help it. Next
year perhaps I can send you to school—you’d
like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I do miss the other chaps, rather,” Peter
confessed; “but if Jim could stay after
his leg was well, we could have awful larks.”
“I’ve no doubt of it,” said Mother.
“Well—perhaps he could, but you know,
dear, we’re not rich. I can’t afford to
get him everything he’ll want. And he must
have a nurse.”
“Can’t you nurse him, Mother? You do nurse
people so beautifully.”
“That’s a pretty compliment, Pete—but
I can’t do nursing and my writing as well.
That’s the worst of it.”
“Then you MUST send the letter to his grandfather?”
“Of course—and to his schoolmaster, too.
We telegraphed to them both, but I must write
as well. They’ll be most dreadfully anxious.”
“I say, Mother, why can’t his grandfather
pay for a nurse?” Peter suggested. “That
would be ripping. I expect the old boy’s
rolling in money. Grandfathers in books always
are.”
“Well, this one isn’t in a book,” said
Mother, “so we mustn’t expect him to roll
much.”
“I say,” said Peter, musingly, “wouldn’t
it be jolly if we all WERE in a book, and
you were writing it? Then you could make all
sorts of jolly things happen, and make Jim’s
legs get well at once and be all right to-morrow,
and Father come home soon and—”
“Do you miss your Father very much?” Mother
asked, rather coldly, Peter thought.
“Awfully,” said Peter, briefly.
Mother was enveloping and addressing the second
letter.
“You see,” Peter went on slowly, “you
see, it’s not only him BEING Father, but
now he’s away there’s no other man in
the house but me—that’s why I want Jim
to stay so frightfully much. Wouldn’t you
like to be writing that book with us all in
it, Mother, and make Daddy come home soon?”
Peter’s Mother put her arm round him suddenly,
and hugged him in silence for a minute. Then
she said:—
“Don’t you think it’s rather nice to
think that we’re in a book that God’s
writing? If I were writing the book, I might
make mistakes. But God knows how to make the
story end just right—in the way that’s
best for us.”
“Do you really believe that, Mother?”
Peter asked quietly.
“Yes,” she said, “I do believe it—almost
always—except when I’m so sad that I can’t
believe anything. But even when I can’t
believe it, I know it’s true—and I try
to believe. You don’t know how I try, Peter.
Now take the letters to the post, and don’t
let’s be sad any more. Courage, courage!
That’s the finest of all the virtues! I
dare say Jim will be here for two or three
weeks yet.”
For what was left of the evening Peter was
so angelic that Bobbie feared he was going
to be ill. She was quite relieved in the morning
to find him plaiting Phyllis’s hair on to
the back of her chair in quite his old manner.
It was soon after breakfast that a knock came
at the door. The children were hard at work
cleaning the brass candlesticks in honour
of Jim’s visit.
“That’ll be the Doctor,” said Mother;
“I’ll go. Shut the kitchen door—you’re
not fit to be seen.”
But it wasn’t the Doctor. They knew that
by the voice and by the sound of the boots
that went upstairs. They did not recognise
the sound of the boots, but everyone was certain
that they had heard the voice before.
There was a longish interval. The boots and
the voice did not come down again.
“Who can it possibly be?” they kept on
asking themselves and each other.
“Perhaps,” said Peter at last, “Dr.
Forrest has been attacked by highwaymen and
left for dead, and this is the man he’s
telegraphed for to take his place. Mrs. Viney
said he had a local tenant to do his work
when he went for a holiday, didn’t you,
Mrs. Viney?”
“I did so, my dear,” said Mrs. Viney from
the back kitchen.
“He’s fallen down in a fit, more likely,”
said Phyllis, “all human aid despaired of.
And this is his man come to break the news
to Mother.”
“Nonsense!” said Peter, briskly; “Mother
wouldn’t have taken the man up into Jim’s
bedroom. Why should she? Listen—the door’s
opening. Now they’ll come down. I’ll open
the door a crack.”
He did.
“It’s not listening,” he replied indignantly
to Bobbie’s scandalised remarks; “nobody
in their senses would talk secrets on the
stairs. And Mother can’t have secrets to
talk with Dr. Forrest’s stable-man—and
you said it was him.”
“Bobbie,” called Mother’s voice.
They opened the kitchen door, and Mother leaned
over the stair railing.
“Jim’s grandfather has come,” she said;
“wash your hands and faces and then you
can see him. He wants to see you!” The bedroom
door shut again.
“There now!” said Peter; “fancy us not
even thinking of that! Let’s have some hot
water, Mrs. Viney. I’m as black as your
hat.”
The three were indeed dirty, for the stuff
you clean brass candlesticks with is very
far from cleaning to the cleaner.
They were still busy with soap and flannel
when they heard the boots and the voice come
down the stairs and go into the dining-room.
And when they were clean, though still damp—because
it takes such a long time to dry your hands
properly, and they were very impatient to
see the grandfather—they filed into the
dining-room.
Mother was sitting in the window-seat, and
in the leather-covered armchair that Father
always used to sit in at the other house sat—
THEIR OWN OLD GENTLEMAN!
“Well, I never did,” said Peter, even
before he said, “How do you do?” He was,
as he explained afterwards, too surprised
even to remember that there was such a thing
as politeness—much less to practise it.
“It’s our own old gentleman!” said Phyllis.
“Oh, it’s you!” said Bobbie. And then
they remembered themselves and their manners
and said, “How do you do?” very nicely.
“This is Jim’s grandfather, Mr. ——” said
Mother, naming the old gentleman’s name.
“How splendid!” said Peter; “that’s
just exactly like a book, isn’t it, Mother?”
“It is, rather,” said Mother, smiling;
“things do happen in real life that are
rather like books, sometimes.”
“I am so awfully glad it IS you,” said
Phyllis; “when you think of the tons of
old gentlemen there are in the world—it
might have been almost anyone.”
“I say, though,” said Peter, “you’re
not going to take Jim away, though, are you?”
“Not at present,” said the old gentleman.
“Your Mother has most kindly consented to
let him stay here. I thought of sending a
nurse, but your Mother is good enough to say
that she will nurse him herself.”
“But what about her writing?” said Peter,
before anyone could stop him. “There won’t
be anything for him to eat if Mother doesn’t
write.”
“That’s all right,” said Mother, hastily.
The old gentleman looked very kindly at Mother.
“I see,” he said, “you trust your children,
and confide in them.”
“Of course,” said Mother.
“Then I may tell them of our little arrangement,”
he said. “Your Mother, my dears, has consented
to give up writing for a little while and
to become a Matron of my Hospital.”
“Oh!” said Phyllis, blankly; “and shall
we have to go away from Three Chimneys and
the Railway and everything?”
“No, no, darling,” said Mother, hurriedly.
“The Hospital is called Three Chimneys Hospital,”
said the old gentleman, “and my unlucky
Jim’s the only patient, and I hope he’ll
continue to be so. Your Mother will be Matron,
and there’ll be a hospital staff of a housemaid
and a cook—till Jim’s well.”
“And then will Mother go on writing again?”
asked Peter.
“We shall see,” said the old gentleman,
with a slight, swift glance at Bobbie; “perhaps
something nice may happen and she won’t
have to.”
“I love my writing,” said Mother, very
quickly.
“I know,” said the old gentleman; “don’t
be afraid that I’m going to try to interfere.
But one never knows. Very wonderful and beautiful
things do happen, don’t they? And we live
most of our lives in the hope of them. I may
come again to see the boy?”
“Surely,” said Mother, “and I don’t
know how to thank you for making it possible
for me to nurse him. Dear boy!”
“He kept calling Mother, Mother, in the
night,” said Phyllis. “I woke up twice
and heard him.”
“He didn’t mean me,” said Mother, in
a low voice to the old gentleman; “that’s
why I wanted so much to keep him.”
The old gentleman rose.
“I’m so glad,” said Peter, “that you’re
going to keep him, Mother.”
“Take care of your Mother, my dears,”
said the old gentleman. “She’s a woman
in a million.”
“Yes, isn’t she?” whispered Bobbie.
“God bless her,” said the old gentleman,
taking both Mother’s hands, “God bless
her! Ay, and she shall be blessed. Dear me,
where’s my hat? Will Bobbie come with me
to the gate?”
At the gate he stopped and said:—
“You’re a good child, my dear—I got
your letter. But it wasn’t needed. When
I read about your Father’s case in the papers
at the time, I had my doubts. And ever since
I’ve known who you were, I’ve been trying
to find out things. I haven’t done very
much yet. But I have hopes, my dear—I have
hopes.”
“Oh!” said Bobbie, choking a little.
“Yes—I may say great hopes. But keep your
secret a little longer. Wouldn’t do to upset
your Mother with a false hope, would it?”
“Oh, but it isn’t false!” said Bobbie;
“I KNOW you can do it. I knew you could
when I wrote. It isn’t a false hope, is
it?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t think it’s
a false hope, or I wouldn’t have told you.
And I think you deserve to be told that there
IS a hope.”
“And you don’t think Father did it, do
you? Oh, say you don’t think he did.”
“My dear,” he said, “I’m perfectly
CERTAIN he didn’t.”
If it was a false hope, it was none the less
a very radiant one that lay warm at Bobbie’s
heart, and through the days that followed
lighted her little face as a Japanese lantern
is lighted by the candle within.
Chapter XIV. The End.
Life at the Three Chimneys was never quite
the same again after the old gentleman came
to see his grandson. Although they now knew
his name, the children never spoke of him
by it—at any rate, when they were by themselves.
To them he was always the old gentleman, and
I think he had better be the old gentleman
to us, too. It wouldn’t make him seem any
more real to you, would it, if I were to tell
you that his name was Snooks or Jenkins (which
it wasn’t)?—and, after all, I must be
allowed to keep one secret. It’s the only
one; I have told you everything else, except
what I am going to tell you in this chapter,
which is the last. At least, of course, I
haven’t told you EVERYTHING. If I were to
do that, the book would never come to an end,
and that would be a pity, wouldn’t it?
Well, as I was saying, life at Three Chimneys
was never quite the same again. The cook and
the housemaid were very nice (I don’t mind
telling you their names—they were Clara
and Ethelwyn), but they told Mother they did
not seem to want Mrs. Viney, and that she
was an old muddler. So Mrs. Viney came only
two days a week to do washing and ironing.
Then Clara and Ethelwyn said they could do
the work all right if they weren’t interfered
with, and that meant that the children no
longer got the tea and cleared it away and
washed up the tea-things and dusted the rooms.
This would have left quite a blank in their
lives, although they had often pretended to
themselves and to each other that they hated
housework. But now that Mother had no writing
and no housework to do, she had time for lessons.
And lessons the children had to do. However
nice the person who is teaching you may be,
lessons are lessons all the world over, and
at their best are worse fun than peeling potatoes
or lighting a fire.
On the other hand, if Mother now had time
for lessons, she also had time for play, and
to make up little rhymes for the children
as she used to do. She had not had much time
for rhymes since she came to Three Chimneys.
There was one very odd thing about these lessons.
Whatever the children were doing, they always
wanted to be doing something else. When Peter
was doing his Latin, he thought it would be
nice to be learning History like Bobbie. Bobbie
would have preferred Arithmetic, which was
what Phyllis happened to be doing, and Phyllis
of course thought Latin much the most interesting
kind of lesson. And so on.
So, one day, when they sat down to lessons,
each of them found a little rhyme at its place.
I put the rhymes in to show you that their
Mother really did understand a little how
children feel about things, and also the kind
of words they use, which is the case with
very few grown-up people. I suppose most grown-ups
have very bad memories, and have forgotten
how they felt when they were little. Of course,
the verses are supposed to be spoken by the
children.
PETER
I once thought Caesar easy pap—
How very soft I must have been!
When they start Caesar with a chap
He little know what that will mean.
Oh, verbs are silly stupid things.
I’d rather learn the dates of kings!
BOBBIE
The worst of all my lesson things
Is learning who succeeded who
In all the rows of queens and kings,
With dates to everything they do:
With dates enough to make you sick;—
I wish it was Arithmetic!
PHYLLIS
Such pounds and pounds of apples fill
My slate—what is the price you’d spend?
You scratch the figures out until
You cry upon the dividend.
I’d break the slate and scream for joy
If I did Latin like a boy!
This kind of thing, of course, made lessons
much jollier. It is something to know that
the person who is teaching you sees that it
is not all plain sailing for you, and does
not think that it is just your stupidness
that makes you not know your lessons till
you’ve learned them!
Then as Jim’s leg got better it was very
pleasant to go up and sit with him and hear
tales about his school life and the other
boys. There was one boy, named Parr, of whom
Jim seemed to have formed the lowest possible
opinion, and another boy named Wigsby Minor,
for whose views Jim had a great respect. Also
there were three brothers named Paley, and
the youngest was called Paley Terts, and was
much given to fighting.
Peter drank in all this with deep joy, and
Mother seemed to have listened with some interest,
for one day she gave Jim a sheet of paper
on which she had written a rhyme about Parr,
bringing in Paley and Wigsby by name in a
most wonderful way, as well as all the reasons
Jim had for not liking Parr, and Wigsby’s
wise opinion on the matter. Jim was immensely
pleased. He had never had a rhyme written
expressly for him before. He read it till
he knew it by heart and then he sent it to
Wigsby, who liked it almost as much as Jim
did. Perhaps you may like it, too.
THE NEW BOY
His name is Parr: he says that he
Is given bread and milk for tea.
He says his father killed a bear.
He says his mother cuts his hair.
He wears goloshes when it’s wet.
I’ve heard his people call him “Pet”!
He has no proper sense of shame;
He told the chaps his Christian name.
He cannot wicket-keep at all,
He’s frightened of a cricket ball.
He reads indoors for hours and hours.
He knows the names of beastly flowers.
He says his French just like Mossoo—
A beastly stuck-up thing to do—
He won’t keep cave, shirks his turn
And says he came to school to learn!
He won’t play football, says it hurts;
He wouldn’t fight with Paley Terts;
He couldn’t whistle if he tried,
And when we laughed at him he cried!
Now Wigsby Minor says that Parr
Is only like all new boys are.
I know when I first came to school
I wasn’t such a jolly fool!
Jim could never understand how Mother could
have been clever enough to do it. To the others
it seemed nice, but natural. You see they
had always been used to having a mother who
could write verses just like the way people
talk, even to the shocking expression at the
end of the rhyme, which was Jim’s very own.
Jim taught Peter to play chess and draughts
and dominoes, and altogether it was a nice
quiet time.
Only Jim’s leg got better and better, and
a general feeling began to spring up among
Bobbie, Peter, and Phyllis that something
ought to be done to amuse him; not just games,
but something really handsome. But it was
extraordinarily difficult to think of anything.
“It’s no good,” said Peter, when all
of them had thought and thought till their
heads felt quite heavy and swollen; “if
we can’t think of anything to amuse him,
we just can’t, and there’s an end of it.
Perhaps something will just happen of its
own accord that he’ll like.”
“Things DO happen by themselves sometimes,
without your making them,” said Phyllis,
rather as though, usually, everything that
happened in the world was her doing.
“I wish something would happen,” said
Bobbie, dreamily, “something wonderful.”
And something wonderful did happen exactly
four days after she had said this. I wish
I could say it was three days after, because
in fairy tales it is always three days after
that things happen. But this is not a fairy
story, and besides, it really was four and
not three, and I am nothing if not strictly
truthful.
They seemed to be hardly Railway children
at all in those days, and as the days went
on each had an uneasy feeling about this which
Phyllis expressed one day.
“I wonder if the Railway misses us,” she
said, plaintively. “We never go to see it
now.”
“It seems ungrateful,” said Bobbie; “we
loved it so when we hadn’t anyone else to
play with.”
“Perks is always coming up to ask after
Jim,” said Peter, “and the signalman’s
little boy is better. He told me so.”
“I didn’t mean the people,” explained
Phyllis; “I meant the dear Railway itself.”
“The thing I don’t like,” said Bobbie,
on this fourth day, which was a Tuesday, “is
our having stopped waving to the 9.15 and
sending our love to Father by it.”
“Let’s begin again,” said Phyllis. And
they did.
Somehow the change of everything that was
made by having servants in the house and Mother
not doing any writing, made the time seem
extremely long since that strange morning
at the beginning of things, when they had
got up so early and burnt the bottom out of
the kettle and had apple pie for breakfast
and first seen the Railway.
It was September now, and the turf on the
slope to the Railway was dry and crisp. Little
long grass spikes stood up like bits of gold
wire, frail blue harebells trembled on their
tough, slender stalks, Gipsy roses opened
wide and flat their lilac-coloured discs,
and the golden stars of St. John’s Wort
shone at the edges of the pool that lay halfway
to the Railway. Bobbie gathered a generous
handful of the flowers and thought how pretty
they would look lying on the green-and-pink
blanket of silk-waste that now covered Jim’s
poor broken leg.
“Hurry up,” said Peter, “or we shall
miss the 9.15!”
“I can’t hurry more than I am doing,”
said Phyllis. “Oh, bother it! My bootlace
has come undone AGAIN!”
“When you’re married,” said Peter, “your
bootlace will come undone going up the church
aisle, and your man that you’re going to
get married to will tumble over it and smash
his nose in on the ornamented pavement; and
then you’ll say you won’t marry him, and
you’ll have to be an old maid.”
“I shan’t,” said Phyllis. “I’d much
rather marry a man with his nose smashed in
than not marry anybody.”
“It would be horrid to marry a man with
a smashed nose, all the same,” went on Bobbie.
“He wouldn’t be able to smell the flowers
at the wedding. Wouldn’t that be awful!”
“Bother the flowers at the wedding!” cried
Peter. “Look! the signal’s down. We must
run!”
They ran. And once more they waved their handkerchiefs,
without at all minding whether the handkerchiefs
were clean or not, to the 9.15.
“Take our love to Father!” cried Bobbie.
And the others, too, shouted:—
“Take our love to Father!”
The old gentleman waved from his first-class
carriage window. Quite violently he waved.
And there was nothing odd in that, for he
always had waved. But what was really remarkable
was that from every window handkerchiefs fluttered,
newspapers signalled, hands waved wildly.
The train swept by with a rustle and roar,
the little pebbles jumped and danced under
it as it passed, and the children were left
looking at each other.
“Well!” said Peter.
“WELL!” said Bobbie.
“WELL!” said Phyllis.
“Whatever on earth does that mean?” asked
Peter, but he did not expect any answer.
“I don’t know,” said Bobbie. “Perhaps
the old gentleman told the people at his station
to look out for us and wave. He knew we should
like it!”
Now, curiously enough, this was just what
had happened. The old gentleman, who was very
well known and respected at his particular
station, had got there early that morning,
and he had waited at the door where the young
man stands holding the interesting machine
that clips the tickets, and he had said something
to every single passenger who passed through
that door. And after nodding to what the old
gentleman had said—and the nods expressed
every shade of surprise, interest, doubt,
cheerful pleasure, and grumpy agreement—each
passenger had gone on to the platform and
read one certain part of his newspaper. And
when the passengers got into the train, they
had told the other passengers who were already
there what the old gentleman had said, and
then the other passengers had also looked
at their newspapers and seemed very astonished
and, mostly, pleased. Then, when the train
passed the fence where the three children
were, newspapers and hands and handkerchiefs
were waved madly, till all that side of the
train was fluttery with white like the pictures
of the King’s Coronation in the biograph
at Maskelyne and Cook’s. To the children
it almost seemed as though the train itself
was alive, and was at last responding to the
love that they had given it so freely and
so long.
“It is most extraordinarily rum!” said
Peter.
“Most stronery!” echoed Phyllis.
But Bobbie said, “Don’t you think the
old gentleman’s waves seemed more significating
than usual?”
“No,” said the others.
“I do,” said Bobbie. “I thought he was
trying to explain something to us with his
newspaper.”
“Explain what?” asked Peter, not unnaturally.
“I don’t know,” Bobbie answered, “but
I do feel most awfully funny. I feel just
exactly as if something was going to happen.”
“What is going to happen,” said Peter,
“is that Phyllis’s stocking is going to
come down.”
This was but too true. The suspender had given
way in the agitation of the waves to the 9.15.
Bobbie’s handkerchief served as first aid
to the injured, and they all went home.
Lessons were more than usually difficult to
Bobbie that day. Indeed, she disgraced herself
so deeply over a quite simple sum about the
division of 48 pounds of meat and 36 pounds
of bread among 144 hungry children that Mother
looked at her anxiously.
“Don’t you feel quite well, dear?” she
asked.
“I don’t know,” was Bobbie’s unexpected
answer. “I don’t know how I feel. It isn’t
that I’m lazy. Mother, will you let me off
lessons to-day? I feel as if I wanted to be
quite alone by myself.”
“Yes, of course I’ll let you off,” said
Mother; “but—”
Bobbie dropped her slate. It cracked just
across the little green mark that is so useful
for drawing patterns round, and it was never
the same slate again. Without waiting to pick
it up she bolted. Mother caught her in the
hall feeling blindly among the waterproofs
and umbrellas for her garden hat.
“What is it, my sweetheart?” said Mother.
“You don’t feel ill, do you?”
“I DON’T know,” Bobbie answered, a little
breathlessly, “but I want to be by myself
and see if my head really IS all silly and
my inside all squirmy-twisty.”
“Hadn’t you better lie down?” Mother
said, stroking her hair back from her forehead.
“I’d be more alive in the garden, I think,”
said Bobbie.
But she could not stay in the garden. The
hollyhocks and the asters and the late roses
all seemed to be waiting for something to
happen. It was one of those still, shiny autumn
days, when everything does seem to be waiting.
Bobbie could not wait.
“I’ll go down to the station,” she said,
“and talk to Perks and ask about the signalman’s
little boy.”
So she went down. On the way she passed the
old lady from the Post-office, who gave her
a kiss and a hug, but, rather to Bobbie’s
surprise, no words except:—
“God bless you, love—” and, after a
pause, “run along—do.”
The draper’s boy, who had sometimes been
a little less than civil and a little more
than contemptuous, now touched his cap, and
uttered the remarkable words:—
“‘Morning, Miss, I’m sure—”
The blacksmith, coming along with an open
newspaper in his hand, was even more strange
in his manner. He grinned broadly, though,
as a rule, he was a man not given to smiles,
and waved the newspaper long before he came
up to her. And as he passed her, he said,
in answer to her “Good morning”:—
“Good morning to you, Missie, and many of
them! I wish you joy, that I do!”
“Oh!” said Bobbie to herself, and her
heart quickened its beats, “something IS
going to happen! I know it is—everyone is
so odd, like people are in dreams.”
The Station Master wrung her hand warmly.
In fact he worked it up and down like a pump-handle.
But he gave her no reason for this unusually
enthusiastic greeting. He only said:—
“The 11.54’s a bit late, Miss—the extra
luggage this holiday time,” and went away
very quickly into that inner Temple of his
into which even Bobbie dared not follow him.
Perks was not to be seen, and Bobbie shared
the solitude of the platform with the Station
Cat. This tortoiseshell lady, usually of a
retiring disposition, came to-day to rub herself
against the brown stockings of Bobbie with
arched back, waving tail, and reverberating
purrs.
“Dear me!” said Bobbie, stooping to stroke
her, “how very kind everybody is to-day—even
you, Pussy!”
Perks did not appear until the 11.54 was signalled,
and then he, like everybody else that morning,
had a newspaper in his hand.
“Hullo!” he said, “‘ere you are. Well,
if THIS is the train, it’ll be smart work!
Well, God bless you, my dear! I see it in
the paper, and I don’t think I was ever
so glad of anything in all my born days!”
He looked at Bobbie a moment, then said, “One
I must have, Miss, and no offence, I know,
on a day like this ‘ere!” and with that
he kissed her, first on one cheek and then
on the other.
“You ain’t offended, are you?” he asked
anxiously. “I ain’t took too great a liberty?
On a day like this, you know—”
“No, no,” said Bobbie, “of course it’s
not a liberty, dear Mr. Perks; we love you
quite as much as if you were an uncle of ours—but—on
a day like WHAT?”
“Like this ‘ere!” said Perks. “Don’t
I tell you I see it in the paper?”
“Saw WHAT in the paper?” asked Bobbie,
but already the 11.54 was steaming into the
station and the Station Master was looking
at all the places where Perks was not and
ought to have been.
Bobbie was left standing alone, the Station
Cat watching her from under the bench with
friendly golden eyes.
Of course you know already exactly what was
going to happen. Bobbie was not so clever.
She had the vague, confused, expectant feeling
that comes to one’s heart in dreams. What
her heart expected I can’t tell—perhaps
the very thing that you and I know was going
to happen—but her mind expected nothing;
it was almost blank, and felt nothing but
tiredness and stupidness and an empty feeling,
like your body has when you have been a long
walk and it is very far indeed past your proper
dinner-time.
Only three people got out of the 11.54. The
first was a countryman with two baskety boxes
full of live chickens who stuck their russet
heads out anxiously through the wicker bars;
the second was Miss Peckitt, the grocer’s
wife’s cousin, with a tin box and three
brown-paper parcels; and the third—
“Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!” That scream
went like a knife into the heart of everyone
in the train, and people put their heads out
of the windows to see a tall pale man with
lips set in a thin close line, and a little
girl clinging to him with arms and legs, while
his arms went tightly round her.
* * * * * *
“I knew something wonderful was going to
happen,” said Bobbie, as they went up the
road, “but I didn’t think it was going
to be this. Oh, my Daddy, my Daddy!”
“Then didn’t Mother get my letter?”
Father asked.
“There weren’t any letters this morning.
Oh! Daddy! it IS really you, isn’t it?”
The clasp of a hand she had not forgotten
assured her that it was. “You must go in
by yourself, Bobbie, and tell Mother quite
quietly that it’s all right. They’ve caught
the man who did it. Everyone knows now that
it wasn’t your Daddy.”
“I always knew it wasn’t,” said Bobbie.
“Me and Mother and our old gentleman.”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s all his doing.
Mother wrote and told me you had found out.
And she told me what you’d been to her.
My own little girl!” They stopped a minute
then.
And now I see them crossing the field. Bobbie
goes into the house, trying to keep her eyes
from speaking before her lips have found the
right words to “tell Mother quite quietly”
that the sorrow and the struggle and the parting
are over and done, and that Father has come
home.
I see Father walking in the garden, waiting—waiting.
He is looking at the flowers, and each flower
is a miracle to eyes that all these months
of Spring and Summer have seen only flagstones
and gravel and a little grudging grass. But
his eyes keep turning towards the house. And
presently he leaves the garden and goes to
stand outside the nearest door. It is the
back door, and across the yard the swallows
are circling. They are getting ready to fly
away from cold winds and keen frost to the
land where it is always summer. They are the
same swallows that the children built the
little clay nests for.
Now the house door opens. Bobbie’s voice
calls:—
“Come in, Daddy; come in!”
He goes in and the door is shut. I think we
will not open the door or follow him. I think
that just now we are not wanted there. I think
it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly
away. At the end of the field, among the thin
gold spikes of grass and the harebells and
Gipsy roses and St. John’s Wort, we may
just take one last look, over our shoulders,
at the white house where neither we nor anyone
else is wanted now.
