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The Railway Children

by E. Nesbit · English · Gutenberg #1874 · 346,020 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Railway Children

Author: E. Nesbit


        
Release date: August 1, 1999 [eBook #1874]
                Most recently updated: March 9, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1874

Credits: Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAILWAY CHILDREN ***




Produced by Les Bowler





THE RAILWAY CHILDREN

By E. Nesbit


               To my dear son Paul Bland,
               behind whose knowledge of railways
               my ignorance confidently shelters.


Contents.

     I.    The beginning of things.
     II.   Peter's coal-mine.
     III.  The old gentleman.
     IV.   The engine-burglar.
     V.    Prisoners and captives.
     VI.   Saviours of the train.
     VII.  For valour.
     VIII. The amateur fireman.
     IX.   The pride of Perks.
     X.    The terrible secret.
     XI.   The hound in the red jersey.
     XII.  What Bobbie brought home.
     XIII. The hound's grandfather.
     XIV.  The End.




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-o

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