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+*The Project Gutenberg Etext The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit*
+#7 in our series by E. Nesbit
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+The Railway Children
+
+by E. Nesbit
+
+August, 1999  [Etext #1874]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
+******This file should be named rlwyc10.txt or rlwyc10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, rlwyc11.txt
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+This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
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+This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
+
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+
+
+THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+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.
+It's voice was loud and harsh.
+
+"Oh, stop, stop, stop!" cried Bobbie.  No one heard her.  At least
+Peter and Phyllis didn't, for the oncoming rush of the train covered
+the sound of her voice with a mountain of sound.  But afterwards she
+used to wonder whether the engine itself had not heard her.  It
+seemed almost as though it had--for it slackened swiftly, slackened
+and stopped, not twenty yards from the place where Bobbie's two
+flags waved over the line.  She saw the great black engine stop
+dead, but somehow she could not stop waving the flags.  And when the
+driver and the fireman had got off the engine and Peter and Phyllis
+had gone to meet them and pour out their excited tale of the awful
+mound just round the corner, Bobbie still waved the flags but more
+and more feebly and jerkily.
+
+When the others turned towards her she was lying across the line
+with her hands flung forward and still gripping the sticks of the
+little red flannel flags.
+
+The engine-driver picked her up, carried her to the train, and laid
+her on the cushions of a first-class carriage.
+
+"Gone right off in a faint," he said, "poor little woman.  And no
+wonder.  I'll just 'ave a look at this 'ere mound of yours, and then
+we'll run you back to the station and get her seen to."
+
+It was horrible to see Bobbie lying so white and quiet, with her
+lips blue, and parted.
+
+"I believe that's what people look like when they're dead,"
+whispered Phyllis.
+
+"DON'T!" said Peter, sharply.
+
+They sat by Bobbie on the blue cushions, and the train ran back.
+Before it reached their station Bobbie had sighed and opened her
+eyes, and rolled herself over and begun to cry.  This cheered the
+others wonderfully.  They had seen her cry before, but they had
+never seen her faint, nor anyone else, for the matter of that.  They
+had not known what to do when she was fainting, but now she was only
+crying they could thump her on the back and tell her not to, just as
+they always did.  And presently, when she stopped crying, they were
+able to laugh at her for being such a coward as to faint.
+
+When the station was reached, the three were the heroes of an
+agitated meeting on the platform.
+
+The praises they got for their "prompt action," their "common
+sense," their "ingenuity," were enough to have turned anybody's
+head.  Phyllis enjoyed herself thoroughly.  She had never been a
+real heroine before, and the feeling was delicious.  Peter's ears
+got very red.  Yet he, too, enjoyed himself.  Only Bobbie wished
+they all wouldn't.  She wanted to get away.
+
+"You'll hear from the Company about this, I expect," said the
+Station Master.
+
+Bobbie wished she might never hear of it again.  She pulled at
+Peter's jacket.
+
+"Oh, come away, come away!  I want to go home," she said.
+
+So they went.  And as they went Station Master and Porter and guards
+and driver and fireman and passengers sent up a cheer.
+
+"Oh, listen," cried Phyllis; "that's for US!"
+
+"Yes," said Peter.  "I say, I am glad I thought about something red,
+and waving it."
+
+"How lucky we DID put on our red flannel petticoats!" said Phyllis.
+
+Bobbie said nothing.  She was thinking of the horrible mound, and
+the trustful train rushing towards it.
+
+"And it was US that saved them," said Peter.
+
+"How dreadful if they had all been killed!" said Phyllis; "wouldn't
+it, Bobbie?"
+
+"We never got any cherries, after all," said Bobbie.
+
+The others thought her rather heartless.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII. For valour.
+
+
+I hope you don't mind my telling you a good deal about Roberta.  The
+fact is I am growing very fond of her.  The more I observe her the
+more I love her.  And I notice all sorts of things about her that I
+like.
+
+For instance, she was quite oddly anxious to make other people
+happy.  And she could keep a secret, a tolerably rare
+accomplishment.  Also she had the power of silent sympathy.  That
+sounds rather dull, I know, but it's not so dull as it sounds.  It
+just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and
+to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling
+you all the time how sorry she is for you.  That was what Bobbie was
+like.  She knew that Mother was unhappy--and that Mother had not
+told her the reason.  So she just loved Mother more and never said a
+single word that could let Mother know how earnestly her little girl
+wondered what Mother was unhappy about.  This needs practice.  It is
+not so easy as you might think.
+
+Whatever happened--and all sorts of nice, pleasant ordinary things
+happened--such as picnics, games, and buns for tea, Bobbie always
+had these thoughts at the back of her mind.  "Mother's unhappy.
+Why?  I don't know.  She doesn't want me to know.  I won't try to
+find out.  But she IS unhappy.  Why?  I don't know.  She doesn't--"
+and so on, repeating and repeating like a tune that you don't know
+the stopping part of.
+
+The Russian gentleman still took up a good deal of everybody's
+thoughts.  All the editors and secretaries of Societies and Members
+of Parliament had answered Mother's letters as politely as they knew
+how; but none of them could tell where the wife and children of Mr.
+Szezcpansky would be likely to be.  (Did I tell you that the
+Russian's very Russian name was that?)
+
+Bobbie had another quality which you will hear differently described
+by different people.  Some of them call it interfering in other
+people's business--and some call it "helping lame dogs over stiles,"
+and some call it "loving-kindness."  It just means trying to help
+people.
+
+She racked her brains to think of some way of helping the Russian
+gentleman to find his wife and children.  He had learned a few words
+of English now.  He could say "Good morning," and "Good night," and
+"Please," and "Thank you," and "Pretty," when the children brought
+him flowers, and "Ver' good," when they asked him how he had slept.
+
+The way he smiled when he "said his English," was, Bobbie felt,
+"just too sweet for anything."  She used to think of his face
+because she fancied it would help her to some way of helping him.
+But it did not.  Yet his being there cheered her because she saw
+that it made Mother happier.
+
+"She likes to have someone to be good to, even beside us," said
+Bobbie.  "And I know she hated to let him have Father's clothes.
+But I suppose it 'hurt nice,' or she wouldn't have."
+
+For many and many a night after the day when she and Peter and
+Phyllis had saved the train from wreck by waving their little red
+flannel flags, Bobbie used to wake screaming and shivering, seeing
+again that horrible mound, and the poor, dear trustful engine
+rushing on towards it--just thinking that it was doing its swift
+duty, and that everything was clear and safe.  And then a warm
+thrill of pleasure used to run through her at the remembrance of how
+she and Peter and Phyllis and the red flannel petticoats had really
+saved everybody.
+
+One morning a letter came.  It was addressed to Peter and Bobbie and
+Phyllis.  They opened it with enthusiastic curiosity, for they did
+not often get letters.
+
+The letter said:--
+
+"Dear Sir, and Ladies,--It is proposed to make a small presentation
+to you, in commemoration of your prompt and courageous action in
+warning the train on the --- inst., and thus averting what must,
+humanly speaking, have been a terrible accident.  The presentation
+will take place at the --- Station at three o'clock on the 30th
+inst., if this time and place will be convenient to you.
+
+          "Yours faithfully,
+
+                    "Jabez Inglewood.
+"Secretary, Great Northern and Southern Railway Co."
+
+There never had been a prouder moment in the lives of the three
+children.  They rushed to Mother with the letter, and she also felt
+proud and said so, and this made the children happier than ever.
+
+"But if the presentation is money, you must say, 'Thank you, but
+we'd rather not take it,'" said Mother.  "I'll wash your Indian
+muslins at once," she added.  "You must look tidy on an occasion
+like this."
+
+"Phil and I can wash them," said Bobbie, "if you'll iron them,
+Mother."
+
+Washing is rather fun.  I wonder whether you've ever done it?  This
+particular washing took place in the back kitchen, which had a stone
+floor and a very big stone sink under its window.
+
+"Let's put the bath on the sink," said Phyllis; "then we can pretend
+we're out-of-doors washerwomen like Mother saw in France."
+
+"But they were washing in the cold river," said Peter, his hands in
+his pockets, "not in hot water."
+
+"This is a HOT river, then," said Phyllis; "lend a hand with the
+bath, there's a dear."
+
+"I should like to see a deer lending a hand," said Peter, but he
+lent his.
+
+"Now to rub and scrub and scrub and rub," said Phyllis, hopping
+joyously about as Bobbie carefully carried the heavy kettle from the
+kitchen fire.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Bobbie, greatly shocked; "you don't rub muslin.  You
+put the boiled soap in the hot water and make it all frothy-lathery-
+-and then you shake the muslin and squeeze it, ever so gently, and
+all the dirt comes out.  It's only clumsy things like tablecloths
+and sheets that have to be rubbed."
+
+The lilac and the Gloire de Dijon roses outside the window swayed in
+the soft breeze.
+
+"It's a nice drying day--that's one thing," said Bobbie, feeling
+very grown up.  "Oh, I do wonder what wonderful feelings we shall
+have when we WEAR the Indian muslin dresses!"
+
+"Yes, so do I," said Phyllis, shaking and squeezing the muslin in
+quite a professional manner.
+
+"NOW we squeeze out the soapy water.  NO--we mustn't twist them--and
+then rinse them.  I'll hold them while you and Peter empty the bath
+and get clean water."
+
+"A presentation!  That means presents," said Peter, as his sisters,
+having duly washed the pegs and wiped the line, hung up the dresses
+to dry.  "Whatever will it be?"
+
+"It might be anything," said Phyllis; "what I've always wanted is a
+Baby elephant--but I suppose they wouldn't know that."
+
+"Suppose it was gold models of steam-engines?" said Bobbie.
+
+"Or a big model of the scene of the prevented accident," suggested
+Peter, "with a little model train, and dolls dressed like us and the
+engine-driver and fireman and passengers."
+
+"Do you LIKE," said Bobbie, doubtfully, drying her hands on the
+rough towel that hung on a roller at the back of the scullery door,
+"do you LIKE us being rewarded for saving a train?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Peter, downrightly; "and don't you try to come it
+over us that you don't like it, too.  Because I know you do."
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie, doubtfully, "I know I do.  But oughtn't we to be
+satisfied with just having done it, and not ask for anything more?"
+
+"Who did ask for anything more, silly?" said her brother; "Victoria
+Cross soldiers don't ASK for it; but they're glad enough to get it
+all the same.  Perhaps it'll be medals.  Then, when I'm very old
+indeed, I shall show them to my grandchildren and say, 'We only did
+our duty,' and they'll be awfully proud of me."
+
+"You have to be married," warned Phyllis, "or you don't have any
+grandchildren."
+
+"I suppose I shall HAVE to be married some day," said Peter, "but it
+will be an awful bother having her round all the time. I'd like to
+marry a lady who had trances, and only woke up once or twice a
+year."
+
+"Just to say you were the light of her life and then go to sleep
+again.  Yes.  That wouldn't be bad," said Bobbie.
+
+"When _I_ get married," said Phyllis, "I shall want him to want me
+to be awake all the time, so that I can hear him say how nice I am."
+
+"I think it would be nice," said Bobbie, "to marry someone very
+poor, and then you'd do all the work and he'd love you most
+frightfully, and see the blue wood smoke curling up among the trees
+from the domestic hearth as he came home from work every night.  I
+say--we've got to answer that letter and say that the time and place
+WILL be convenient to us.  There's the soap, Peter.  WE'RE both as
+clean as clean.  That pink box of writing paper you had on your
+birthday, Phil."
+
+It took some time to arrange what should be said.  Mother had gone
+back to her writing, and several sheets of pink paper with scalloped
+gilt edges and green four-leaved shamrocks in the corner were
+spoiled before the three had decided what to say.  Then each made a
+copy and signed it with its own name.
+
+The threefold letter ran:--
+
+"Dear Mr. Jabez Inglewood,--Thank you very much.  We did not want to
+be rewarded but only to save the train, but we are glad you think so
+and thank you very much.  The time and place you say will be quite
+convenient to us.  Thank you very much.
+
+          "Your affecate little friend,"
+
+Then came the name, and after it:--
+
+"P.S. Thank you very much."
+
+"Washing is much easier than ironing," said Bobbie, taking the clean
+dry dresses off the line.  "I do love to see things come clean.  Oh-
+-I don't know how we shall wait till it's time to know what
+presentation they're going to present!"
+
+When at last--it seemed a very long time after--it was THE day, the
+three children went down to the station at the proper time.  And
+everything that happened was so odd that it seemed like a dream.
+The Station Master came out to meet them--in his best clothes, as
+Peter noticed at once--and led them into the waiting room where once
+they had played the advertisement game.  It looked quite different
+now.  A carpet had been put down--and there were pots of roses on
+the mantelpiece and on the window ledges--green branches stuck up,
+like holly and laurel are at Christmas, over the framed
+advertisement of Cook's Tours and the Beauties of Devon and the
+Paris Lyons Railway.  There were quite a number of people there
+besides the Porter--two or three ladies in smart dresses, and quite
+a crowd of gentlemen in high hats and frock coats--besides everybody
+who belonged to the station.  They recognized several people who had
+been in the train on the red-flannel-petticoat day.  Best of all
+their own old gentleman was there, and his coat and hat and collar
+seemed more than ever different from anyone else's.  He shook hands
+with them and then everybody sat down on chairs, and a gentleman in
+spectacles--they found out afterwards that he was the District
+Superintendent--began quite a long speech--very clever indeed.  I am
+not going to write the speech down.  First, because you would think
+it dull; and secondly, because it made all the children blush so,
+and get so hot about the ears that I am quite anxious to get away
+from this part of the subject; and thirdly, because the gentleman
+took so many words to say what he had to say that I really haven't
+time to write them down.  He said all sorts of nice things about the
+children's bravery and presence of mind, and when he had done he sat
+down, and everyone who was there clapped and said, "Hear, hear."
+
+And then the old gentleman got up and said things, too.  It was very
+like a prize-giving.  And then he called the children one by one, by
+their names, and gave each of them a beautiful gold watch and chain.
+And inside the watches were engraved after the name of the watch's
+new owner:--
+
+"From the Directors of the Northern and Southern Railway in grateful
+recognition of the courageous and prompt action which averted an
+accident on --- 1905."
+
+The watches were the most beautiful you can possibly imagine, and
+each one had a blue leather case to live in when it was at home.
+
+"You must make a speech now and thank everyone for their kindness,"
+whispered the Station Master in Peter's ear and pushed him forward.
+"Begin 'Ladies and Gentlemen,'" he added.
+
+Each of the children had already said "Thank you," quite properly.
+
+"Oh, dear," said Peter, but he did not resist the push.
+
+"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said in a rather husky voice.  Then there
+was a pause, and he heard his heart beating in his throat.  "Ladies
+and Gentlemen," he went on with a rush, "it's most awfully good of
+you, and we shall treasure the watches all our lives--but really we
+don't deserve it because what we did wasn't anything, really.  At
+least, I mean it was awfully exciting, and what I mean to say--thank
+you all very, very much."
+
+The people clapped Peter more than they had done the District
+Superintendent, and then everybody shook hands with them, and as
+soon as politeness would let them, they got away, and tore up the
+hill to Three Chimneys with their watches in their hands.
+
+It was a wonderful day--the kind of day that very seldom happens to
+anybody and to most of us not at all.
+
+"I did want to talk to the old gentleman about something else," said
+Bobbie, "but it was so public--like being in church."
+
+"What did you want to say?" asked Phyllis.
+
+"I'll tell you when I've thought about it more," said Bobbie.
+
+So when she had thought a little more she wrote a letter.
+
+"My dearest old gentleman," it said; "I want most awfully to ask you
+something.  If you could get out of the train and go by the next, it
+would do.  I do not want you to give me anything.  Mother says we
+ought not to.  And besides, we do not want any THINGS.  Only to talk
+to you about a Prisoner and Captive.  Your loving little friend,
+
+          "Bobbie."
+
+She got the Station Master to give the letter to the old gentleman,
+and next day she asked Peter and Phyllis to come down to the station
+with her at the time when the train that brought the old gentleman
+from town would be passing through.
+
+She explained her idea to them--and they approved thoroughly.
+
+They had all washed their hands and faces, and brushed their hair,
+and were looking as tidy as they knew how.  But Phyllis, always
+unlucky, had upset a jug of lemonade down the front of her dress.
+There was no time to change--and the wind happening to blow from the
+coal yard, her frock was soon powdered with grey, which stuck to the
+sticky lemonade stains and made her look, as Peter said, "like any
+little gutter child."
+
+It was decided that she should keep behind the others as much as
+possible.
+
+"Perhaps the old gentleman won't notice," said Bobbie.  "The aged
+are often weak in the eyes."
+
+There was no sign of weakness, however, in the eyes, or in any other
+part of the old gentleman, as he stepped from the train and looked
+up and down the platform.
+
+The three children, now that it came to the point, suddenly felt
+that rush of deep shyness which makes your ears red and hot, your
+hands warm and wet, and the tip of your nose pink and shiny.
+
+"Oh," said Phyllis, "my heart's thumping like a steam-engine--right
+under my sash, too."
+
+"Nonsense," said Peter, "people's hearts aren't under their sashes."
+
+"I don't care--mine is," said Phyllis.
+
+"If you're going to talk like a poetry-book," said Peter, "my
+heart's in my mouth."
+
+"My heart's in my boots--if you come to that," said Roberta; "but do
+come on--he'll think we're idiots."
+
+"He won't be far wrong," said Peter, gloomily.  And they went
+forward to meet the old gentleman.
+
+"Hullo," he said, shaking hands with them all in turn.  "This is a
+very great pleasure."
+
+"It WAS good of you to get out," Bobbie said, perspiring and polite.
+
+He took her arm and drew her into the waiting room where she and the
+others had played the advertisement game the day they found the
+Russian.  Phyllis and Peter followed.  "Well?" said the old
+gentleman, giving Bobbie's arm a kind little shake before he let it
+go.  "Well?  What is it?"
+
+"Oh, please!" said Bobbie.
+
+"Yes?" said the old gentleman.
+
+"What I mean to say--" said Bobbie.
+
+"Well?" said the old gentleman.
+
+"It's all very nice and kind," said she.
+
+"But?" he said.
+
+"I wish I might say something," she said.
+
+"Say it," said he.
+
+"Well, then," said Bobbie--and out came the story of the Russian who
+had written the beautiful book about poor people, and had been sent
+to prison and to Siberia for just that.
+
+"And what we want more than anything in the world is to find his
+wife and children for him," said Bobbie, "but we don't know how.
+But you must be most horribly clever, or you wouldn't be a Direction
+of the Railway.  And if YOU knew how--and would?  We'd rather have
+that than anything else in the world.  We'd go without the watches,
+even, if you could sell them and find his wife with the money."
+
+And the others said so, too, though not with so much enthusiasm.
+
+"Hum," said the old gentleman, pulling down the white waistcoat that
+had the big gilt buttons on it, "what did you say the name was--
+Fryingpansky?"
+
+"No, no," said Bobbie earnestly.  "I'll write it down for you.  It
+doesn't really look at all like that except when you say it.  Have
+you a bit of pencil and the back of an envelope?" she asked.
+
+The old gentleman got out a gold pencil-case and a beautiful, sweet-
+smelling, green Russian leather note-book and opened it at a new
+page.
+
+"Here," he said, "write here."
+
+She wrote down "Szezcpansky," and said:--
+
+"That's how you write it.  You CALL it Shepansky."
+
+The old gentleman took out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and
+fitted them on his nose.  When he had read the name, he looked quite
+different.
+
+"THAT man?  Bless my soul!" he said.  "Why, I've read his book!
+It's translated into every European language.  A fine book--a noble
+book.  And so your mother took him in--like the good Samaritan.
+Well, well.  I'll tell you what, youngsters--your mother must be a
+very good woman."
+
+"Of course she is," said Phyllis, in astonishment.
+
+"And you're a very good man," said Bobbie, very shy, but firmly
+resolved to be polite.
+
+"You flatter me," said the old gentleman, taking off his hat with a
+flourish.  "And now am I to tell you what I think of you?"
+
+"Oh, please don't," said Bobbie, hastily.
+
+"Why?" asked the old gentleman.
+
+"I don't exactly know," said Bobbie.  "Only--if it's horrid, I don't
+want you to; and if it's nice, I'd rather you didn't."
+
+The old gentleman laughed.
+
+"Well, then," he said, "I'll only just say that I'm very glad you
+came to me about this--very glad, indeed.  And I shouldn't be
+surprised if I found out something very soon.  I know a great many
+Russians in London, and every Russian knows HIS name.  Now tell me
+all about yourselves."
+
+He turned to the others, but there was only one other, and that was
+Peter.  Phyllis had disappeared.
+
+"Tell me all about yourself," said the old gentleman again.  And,
+quite naturally, Peter was stricken dumb.
+
+"All right, we'll have an examination," said the old gentleman; "you
+two sit on the table, and I'll sit on the bench and ask questions."
+
+He did, and out came their names and ages--their Father's name and
+business--how long they had lived at Three Chimneys and a great deal
+more.
+
+The questions were beginning to turn on a herring and a half for
+three halfpence, and a pound of lead and a pound of feathers, when
+the door of the waiting room was kicked open by a boot; as the boot
+entered everyone could see that its lace was coming undone--and in
+came Phyllis, very slowly and carefully.
+
+In one hand she carried a large tin can, and in the other a thick
+slice of bread and butter.
+
+"Afternoon tea," she announced proudly, and held the can and the
+bread and butter out to the old gentleman, who took them and said:--
+
+"Bless my soul!"
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis.
+
+"It's very thoughtful of you," said the old gentleman, "very."
+
+"But you might have got a cup," said Bobbie, "and a plate."
+
+"Perks always drinks out of the can," said Phyllis, flushing red.
+"I think it was very nice of him to give it me at all--let alone
+cups and plates," she added.
+
+"So do I," said the old gentleman, and he drank some of the tea and
+tasted the bread and butter.
+
+And then it was time for the next train, and he got into it with
+many good-byes and kind last words.
+
+"Well," said Peter, when they were left on the platform, and the
+tail-lights of the train disappeared round the corner, "it's my
+belief that we've lighted a candle to-day--like Latimer, you know,
+when he was being burned--and there'll be fireworks for our Russian
+before long."
+
+And so there were.
+
+It wasn't ten days after the interview in the waiting room that the
+three children were sitting on the top of the biggest rock in the
+field below their house watching the 5.15 steam away from the
+station along the bottom of the valley.  They saw, too, the few
+people who had got out at the station straggling up the road towards
+the village--and they saw one person leave the road and open the
+gate that led across the fields to Three Chimneys and to nowhere
+else.
+
+"Who on earth!" said Peter, scrambling down.
+
+"Let's go and see," said Phyllis.
+
+So they did.  And when they got near enough to see who the person
+was, they saw it was their old gentleman himself, his brass buttons
+winking in the afternoon sunshine, and his white waistcoat looking
+whiter than ever against the green of the field.
+
+"Hullo!" shouted the children, waving their hands.
+
+"Hullo!" shouted the old gentleman, waving his hat.
+
+Then the three started to run--and when they got to him they hardly
+had breath left to say:--
+
+"How do you do?"
+
+"Good news," said he.  "I've found your Russian friend's wife and
+child--and I couldn't resist the temptation of giving myself the
+pleasure of telling him."
+
+But as he looked at Bobbie's face he felt that he COULD resist that
+temptation.
+
+"Here," he said to her, "you run on and tell him.  The other two
+will show me the way."
+
+Bobbie ran.  But when she had breathlessly panted out the news to
+the Russian and Mother sitting in the quiet garden--when Mother's
+face had lighted up so beautifully, and she had said half a dozen
+quick French words to the Exile--Bobbie wished that she had NOT
+carried the news.  For the Russian sprang up with a cry that made
+Bobbie's heart leap and then tremble--a cry of love and longing such
+as she had never heard.  Then he took Mother's hand and kissed it
+gently and reverently--and then he sank down in his chair and
+covered his face with his hands and sobbed.  Bobbie crept away.  She
+did not want to see the others just then.
+
+But she was as gay as anybody when the endless French talking was
+over, when Peter had torn down to the village for buns and cakes,
+and the girls had got tea ready and taken it out into the garden.
+
+The old gentleman was most merry and delightful.  He seemed to be
+able to talk in French and English almost at the same moment, and
+Mother did nearly as well.  It was a delightful time.  Mother seemed
+as if she could not make enough fuss about the old gentleman, and
+she said yes at once when he asked if he might present some
+"goodies" to his little friends.
+
+The word was new to the children--but they guessed that it meant
+sweets, for the three large pink and green boxes, tied with green
+ribbon, which he took out of his bag, held unheard-of layers of
+beautiful chocolates.
+
+The Russian's few belongings were packed, and they all saw him off
+at the station.
+
+Then Mother turned to the old gentleman and said:--
+
+"I don't know how to thank you for EVERYTHING.  It has been a real
+pleasure to me to see you.  But we live very quietly.  I am so sorry
+that I can't ask you to come and see us again."
+
+The children thought this very hard.  When they HAD made a friend--
+and such a friend--they would dearly have liked him to come and see
+them again.
+
+What the old gentleman thought they couldn't tell.  He only said:--
+
+"I consider myself very fortunate, Madam, to have been received once
+at your house."
+
+"Ah," said Mother, "I know I must seem surly and ungrateful--but--"
+
+"You could never seem anything but a most charming and gracious
+lady," said the old gentleman, with another of his bows.
+
+And as they turned to go up the hill, Bobbie saw her Mother's face.
+
+"How tired you look, Mammy," she said; "lean on me."
+
+"It's my place to give Mother my arm," said Peter.  "I'm the head
+man of the family when Father's away."
+
+Mother took an arm of each.
+
+"How awfully nice," said Phyllis, skipping joyfully, "to think of
+the dear Russian embracing his long-lost wife.  The baby must have
+grown a lot since he saw it."
+
+"Yes," said Mother.
+
+"I wonder whether Father will think I'VE grown," Phyllis went on,
+skipping still more gaily.  "I have grown already, haven't I,
+Mother?"
+
+"Yes," said Mother, "oh, yes," and Bobbie and Peter felt her hands
+tighten on their arms.
+
+"Poor old Mammy, you ARE tired," said Peter.
+
+Bobbie said, "Come on, Phil; I'll race you to the gate."
+
+And she started the race, though she hated doing it.  YOU know why
+Bobbie did that.  Mother only thought that Bobbie was tired of
+walking slowly.  Even Mothers, who love you better than anyone else
+ever will, don't always understand.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII. The amateur firemen.
+
+
+"That's a likely little brooch you've got on, Miss," said Perks the
+Porter; "I don't know as ever I see a thing more like a buttercup
+without it WAS a buttercup."
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie, glad and flushed by this approval.  "I always
+thought it was more like a buttercup almost than even a real one--
+and I NEVER thought it would come to be mine, my very own--and then
+Mother gave it to me for my birthday."
+
+"Oh, have you had a birthday?" said Perks; and he seemed quite
+surprised, as though a birthday were a thing only granted to a
+favoured few.
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie; "when's your birthday, Mr. Perks?"  The children
+were taking tea with Mr. Perks in the Porters' room among the lamps
+and the railway almanacs.  They had brought their own cups and some
+jam turnovers.  Mr. Perks made tea in a beer can, as usual, and
+everyone felt very happy and confidential.
+
+"My birthday?" said Perks, tipping some more dark brown tea out of
+the can into Peter's cup.  "I give up keeping of my birthday afore
+you was born."
+
+"But you must have been born SOMETIME, you know," said Phyllis,
+thoughtfully, "even if it was twenty years ago--or thirty or sixty
+or seventy."
+
+"Not so long as that, Missie," Perks grinned as he answered.  "If
+you really want to know, it was thirty-two years ago, come the
+fifteenth of this month."
+
+"Then why don't you keep it?" asked Phyllis.
+
+"I've got something else to keep besides birthdays," said Perks,
+briefly.
+
+"Oh!  What?" asked Phyllis, eagerly.  "Not secrets?"
+
+"No," said Perks, "the kids and the Missus."
+
+It was this talk that set the children thinking, and, presently,
+talking.  Perks was, on the whole, the dearest friend they had made.
+Not so grand as the Station Master, but more approachable--less
+powerful than the old gentleman, but more confidential.
+
+"It seems horrid that nobody keeps his birthday," said Bobbie.
+"Couldn't WE do something?"
+
+"Let's go up to the Canal bridge and talk it over," said Peter.  "I
+got a new gut line from the postman this morning.  He gave it me for
+a bunch of roses that I gave him for his sweetheart.  She's ill."
+
+"Then I do think you might have given her the roses for nothing,"
+said Bobbie, indignantly.
+
+"Nyang, nyang!" said Peter, disagreeably, and put his hands in his
+pockets.
+
+"He did, of course," said Phyllis, in haste; "directly we heard she
+was ill we got the roses ready and waited by the gate.  It was when
+you were making the brekker-toast.  And when he'd said 'Thank you'
+for the roses so many times--much more than he need have--he pulled
+out the line and gave it to Peter.  It wasn't exchange.  It was the
+grateful heart."
+
+"Oh, I BEG your pardon, Peter," said Bobbie, "I AM so sorry."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Peter, grandly, "I knew you would be."
+
+So then they all went up to the Canal bridge.  The idea was to fish
+from the bridge, but the line was not quite long enough.
+
+"Never mind," said Bobbie.  "Let's just stay here and look at
+things.  Everything's so beautiful."
+
+It was.  The sun was setting in red splendour over the grey and
+purple hills, and the canal lay smooth and shiny in the shadow--no
+ripple broke its surface.  It was like a grey satin ribbon between
+the dusky green silk of the meadows that were on each side of its
+banks.
+
+"It's all right," said Peter, "but somehow I can always see how
+pretty things are much better when I've something to do.  Let's get
+down on to the towpath and fish from there."
+
+Phyllis and Bobbie remembered how the boys on the canal-boats had
+thrown coal at them, and they said so.
+
+"Oh, nonsense," said Peter.  "There aren't any boys here now.  If
+there were, I'd fight them."
+
+Peter's sisters were kind enough not to remind him how he had NOT
+fought the boys when coal had last been thrown.  Instead they said,
+"All right, then," and cautiously climbed down the steep bank to the
+towing-path.  The line was carefully baited, and for half an hour
+they fished patiently and in vain.  Not a single nibble came to
+nourish hope in their hearts.
+
+All eyes were intent on the sluggish waters that earnestly pretended
+they had never harboured a single minnow when a loud rough shout
+made them start.
+
+"Hi!" said the shout, in most disagreeable tones, "get out of that,
+can't you?"
+
+An old white horse coming along the towing-path was within half a
+dozen yards of them.  They sprang to their feet and hastily climbed
+up the bank.
+
+"We'll slip down again when they've gone by," said Bobbie.
+
+But, alas, the barge, after the manner of barges, stopped under the
+bridge.
+
+"She's going to anchor," said Peter; "just our luck!"
+
+The barge did not anchor, because an anchor is not part of a canal-
+boat's furniture, but she was moored with ropes fore and aft--and
+the ropes were made fast to the palings and to crowbars driven into
+the ground.
+
+"What you staring at?" growled the Bargee, crossly.
+
+"We weren't staring," said Bobbie; "we wouldn't be so rude."
+
+"Rude be blessed," said the man; "get along with you!"
+
+"Get along yourself," said Peter.  He remembered what he had said
+about fighting boys, and, besides, he felt safe halfway up the bank.
+"We've as much right here as anyone else."
+
+"Oh, 'AVE you, indeed!" said the man.  "We'll soon see about that."
+And he came across his deck and began to climb down the side of his
+barge.
+
+"Oh, come away, Peter, come away!" said Bobbie and Phyllis, in
+agonised unison.
+
+"Not me," said Peter, "but YOU'D better."
+
+The girls climbed to the top of the bank and stood ready to bolt for
+home as soon as they saw their brother out of danger.  The way home
+lay all down hill.  They knew that they all ran well.  The Bargee
+did not look as if HE did.  He was red-faced, heavy, and beefy.
+
+But as soon as his foot was on the towing-path the children saw that
+they had misjudged him.
+
+He made one spring up the bank and caught Peter by the leg, dragged
+him down--set him on his feet with a shake--took him by the ear--and
+said sternly:--
+
+"Now, then, what do you mean by it?  Don't you know these 'ere
+waters is preserved?  You ain't no right catching fish 'ere--not to
+say nothing of your precious cheek."
+
+Peter was always proud afterwards when he remembered that, with the
+Bargee's furious fingers tightening on his ear, the Bargee's crimson
+countenance close to his own, the Bargee's hot breath on his neck,
+he had the courage to speak the truth.
+
+"I WASN'T catching fish," said Peter.
+
+"That's not YOUR fault, I'll be bound," said the man, giving Peter's
+ear a twist--not a hard one--but still a twist.
+
+Peter could not say that it was.  Bobbie and Phyllis had been
+holding on to the railings above and skipping with anxiety.  Now
+suddenly Bobbie slipped through the railings and rushed down the
+bank towards Peter, so impetuously that Phyllis, following more
+temperately, felt certain that her sister's descent would end in the
+waters of the canal.  And so it would have done if the Bargee hadn't
+let go of Peter's ear--and caught her in his jerseyed arm.
+
+"Who are you a-shoving of?" he said, setting her on her feet.
+
+"Oh," said Bobbie, breathless, "I'm not shoving anybody.  At least,
+not on purpose.  Please don't be cross with Peter.  Of course, if
+it's your canal, we're sorry and we won't any more.  But we didn't
+know it was yours."
+
+"Go along with you," said the Bargee.
+
+"Yes, we will; indeed we will," said Bobbie, earnestly; "but we do
+beg your pardon--and really we haven't caught a single fish.  I'd
+tell you directly if we had, honour bright I would."
+
+She held out her hands and Phyllis turned out her little empty
+pocket to show that really they hadn't any fish concealed about
+them.
+
+"Well," said the Bargee, more gently, "cut along, then, and don't
+you do it again, that's all."
+
+The children hurried up the bank.
+
+"Chuck us a coat, M'ria," shouted the man.  And a red-haired woman
+in a green plaid shawl came out from the cabin door with a baby in
+her arms and threw a coat to him.  He put it on, climbed the bank,
+and slouched along across the bridge towards the village.
+
+"You'll find me up at the 'Rose and Crown' when you've got the kid
+to sleep," he called to her from the bridge.
+
+When he was out of sight the children slowly returned.  Peter
+insisted on this.
+
+"The canal may belong to him," he said, "though I don't believe it
+does.  But the bridge is everybody's.  Doctor Forrest told me it's
+public property.  I'm not going to be bounced off the bridge by him
+or anyone else, so I tell you."
+
+Peter's ear was still sore and so were his feelings.
+
+The girls followed him as gallant soldiers might follow the leader
+of a forlorn hope.
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't," was all they said.
+
+"Go home if you're afraid," said Peter; "leave me alone.  I'M not
+afraid."
+
+The sound of the man's footsteps died away along the quiet road.
+The peace of the evening was not broken by the notes of the sedge-
+warblers or by the voice of the woman in the barge, singing her baby
+to sleep.  It was a sad song she sang.  Something about Bill Bailey
+and how she wanted him to come home.
+
+The children stood leaning their arms on the parapet of the bridge;
+they were glad to be quiet for a few minutes because all three
+hearts were beating much more quickly.
+
+"I'm not going to be driven away by any old bargeman, I'm not," said
+Peter, thickly.
+
+"Of course not," Phyllis said soothingly; "you didn't give in to
+him!  So now we might go home, don't you think?"
+
+"NO," said Peter.
+
+Nothing more was said till the woman got off the barge, climbed the
+bank, and came across the bridge.
+
+She hesitated, looking at the three backs of the children, then she
+said, "Ahem."
+
+Peter stayed as he was, but the girls looked round.
+
+"You mustn't take no notice of my Bill," said the woman; "'is bark's
+worse'n 'is bite.  Some of the kids down Farley way is fair terrors.
+It was them put 'is back up calling out about who ate the puppy-pie
+under Marlow bridge."
+
+"Who DID?" asked Phyllis.
+
+"_I_ dunno," said the woman.  "Nobody don't know!  But somehow, and
+I don't know the why nor the wherefore of it, them words is p'ison
+to a barge-master.  Don't you take no notice.  'E won't be back for
+two hours good.  You might catch a power o' fish afore that.  The
+light's good an' all," she added.
+
+"Thank you," said Bobbie.  "You're very kind.  Where's your baby?"
+
+"Asleep in the cabin," said the woman.  "'E's all right.  Never
+wakes afore twelve.  Reg'lar as a church clock, 'e is."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Bobbie; "I would have liked to see him, close to."
+
+"And a finer you never did see, Miss, though I says it."  The
+woman's face brightened as she spoke.
+
+"Aren't you afraid to leave it?" said Peter.
+
+"Lor' love you, no," said the woman; "who'd hurt a little thing like
+'im?  Besides, Spot's there.  So long!"
+
+The woman went away.
+
+"Shall we go home?" said Phyllis.
+
+"You can.  I'm going to fish," said Peter briefly.
+
+"I thought we came up here to talk about Perks's birthday," said
+Phyllis.
+
+"Perks's birthday'll keep."
+
+So they got down on the towing-path again and Peter fished.  He did
+not catch anything.
+
+It was almost quite dark, the girls were getting tired, and as
+Bobbie said, it was past bedtime, when suddenly Phyllis cried,
+"What's that?"
+
+And she pointed to the canal boat.  Smoke was coming from the
+chimney of the cabin, had indeed been curling softly into the soft
+evening air all the time--but now other wreaths of smoke were
+rising, and these were from the cabin door.
+
+"It's on fire--that's all," said Peter, calmly.  "Serve him right."
+
+"Oh--how CAN you?" cried Phyllis.  "Think of the poor dear dog."
+
+"The BABY!" screamed Bobbie.
+
+In an instant all three made for the barge.
+
+Her mooring ropes were slack, and the little breeze, hardly strong
+enough to be felt, had yet been strong enough to drift her stern
+against the bank.  Bobbie was first--then came Peter, and it was
+Peter who slipped and fell.  He went into the canal up to his neck,
+and his feet could not feel the bottom, but his arm was on the edge
+of the barge.  Phyllis caught at his hair.  It hurt, but it helped
+him to get out.  Next minute he had leaped on to the barge, Phyllis
+following.
+
+"Not you!" he shouted to Bobbie; "ME, because I'm wet."
+
+He caught up with Bobbie at the cabin door, and flung her aside very
+roughly indeed; if they had been playing, such roughness would have
+made Bobbie weep with tears of rage and pain.  Now, though he flung
+her on to the edge of the hold, so that her knee and her elbow were
+grazed and bruised, she only cried:--
+
+"No--not you--ME," and struggled up again.  But not quickly enough.
+
+Peter had already gone down two of the cabin steps into the cloud of
+thick smoke.  He stopped, remembered all he had ever heard of fires,
+pulled his soaked handkerchief out of his breast pocket and tied it
+over his mouth.  As he pulled it out he said:--
+
+"It's all right, hardly any fire at all."
+
+And this, though he thought it was a lie, was rather good of Peter.
+It was meant to keep Bobbie from rushing after him into danger.  Of
+course it didn't.
+
+The cabin glowed red.  A paraffin lamp was burning calmly in an
+orange mist.
+
+"Hi," said Peter, lifting the handkerchief from his mouth for a
+moment.  "Hi, Baby--where are you?"  He choked.
+
+"Oh, let ME go," cried Bobbie, close behind him.  Peter pushed her
+back more roughly than before, and went on.
+
+Now what would have happened if the baby hadn't cried I don't know--
+but just at that moment it DID cry.  Peter felt his way through the
+dark smoke, found something small and soft and warm and alive,
+picked it up and backed out, nearly tumbling over Bobbie who was
+close behind.  A dog snapped at his leg--tried to bark, choked.
+
+"I've got the kid," said Peter, tearing off the handkerchief and
+staggering on to the deck.
+
+Bobbie caught at the place where the bark came from, and her hands
+met on the fat back of a smooth-haired dog.  It turned and fastened
+its teeth on her hand, but very gently, as much as to say:--
+
+"I'm bound to bark and bite if strangers come into my master's
+cabin, but I know you mean well, so I won't REALLY bite."
+
+Bobbie dropped the dog.
+
+"All right, old man.  Good dog," said she.  "Here--give me the baby,
+Peter; you're so wet you'll give it cold."
+
+Peter was only too glad to hand over the strange little bundle that
+squirmed and whimpered in his arms.
+
+"Now," said Bobbie, quickly, "you run straight to the 'Rose and
+Crown' and tell them.  Phil and I will stay here with the precious.
+Hush, then, a dear, a duck, a darling!  Go NOW, Peter!  Run!"
+
+"I can't run in these things," said Peter, firmly; "they're as heavy
+as lead.  I'll walk."
+
+"Then I'LL run," said Bobbie.  "Get on the bank, Phil, and I'll hand
+you the dear."
+
+The baby was carefully handed.  Phyllis sat down on the bank and
+tried to hush the baby.  Peter wrung the water from his sleeves and
+knickerbocker legs as well as he could, and it was Bobbie who ran
+like the wind across the bridge and up the long white quiet twilight
+road towards the 'Rose and Crown.'
+
+There is a nice old-fashioned room at the 'Rose and Crown; where
+Bargees and their wives sit of an evening drinking their supper
+beer, and toasting their supper cheese at a glowing basketful of
+coals that sticks out into the room under a great hooded chimney and
+is warmer and prettier and more comforting than any other fireplace
+_I_ ever saw.
+
+There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire.  You
+might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all
+friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things,
+and talked the same sort of talk.  This is the real secret of
+pleasant society.  The Bargee Bill, whom the children had found so
+disagreeable, was considered excellent company by his mates.  He was
+telling a tale of his own wrongs--always a thrilling subject.  It
+was his barge he was speaking about.
+
+"And 'e sent down word 'paint her inside hout,' not namin' no
+colour, d'ye see?  So I gets a lotter green paint and I paints her
+stem to stern, and I tell yer she looked A1.  Then 'E comes along
+and 'e says, 'Wot yer paint 'er all one colour for?' 'e says.  And I
+says, says I, 'Cause I thought she'd look fust-rate,' says I, 'and I
+think so still.'  An' he says, 'DEW yer?  Then ye can just pay for
+the bloomin' paint yerself,' says he. An' I 'ad to, too."  A murmur
+of sympathy ran round the room.  Breaking noisily in on it came
+Bobbie.  She burst open the swing door--crying breathlessly:--
+
+"Bill!  I want Bill the Bargeman."
+
+There was a stupefied silence.  Pots of beer were held in mid-air,
+paralysed on their way to thirsty mouths.
+
+"Oh," said Bobbie, seeing the bargewoman and making for her.  "Your
+barge cabin's on fire.  Go quickly."
+
+The woman started to her feet, and put a big red hand to her waist,
+on the left side, where your heart seems to be when you are
+frightened or miserable.
+
+"Reginald Horace!" she cried in a terrible voice; "my Reginald
+Horace!"
+
+"All right," said Bobbie, "if you mean the baby; got him out safe.
+Dog, too."  She had no breath for more, except, "Go on--it's all
+alight."
+
+Then she sank on the ale-house bench and tried to get that breath of
+relief after running which people call the 'second wind.'  But she
+felt as though she would never breathe again.
+
+Bill the Bargee rose slowly and heavily.  But his wife was a hundred
+yards up the road before he had quite understood what was the
+matter.
+
+Phyllis, shivering by the canal side, had hardly heard the quick
+approaching feet before the woman had flung herself on the railing,
+rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby from her.
+
+"Don't," said Phyllis, reproachfully; "I'd just got him to sleep."
+
+          *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+Bill came up later talking in a language with which the children
+were wholly unfamiliar.  He leaped on to the barge and dipped up
+pails of water.  Peter helped him and they put out the fire.
+Phyllis, the bargewoman, and the baby--and presently Bobbie, too--
+cuddled together in a heap on the bank.
+
+"Lord help me, if it was me left anything as could catch alight,"
+said the woman again and again.
+
+But it wasn't she.  It was Bill the Bargeman, who had knocked his
+pipe out and the red ash had fallen on the hearth-rug and smouldered
+there and at last broken into flame.  Though a stern man he was
+just.  He did not blame his wife for what was his own fault, as many
+bargemen, and other men, too, would have done.
+
+         *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+Mother was half wild with anxiety when at last the three children
+turned up at Three Chimneys, all very wet by now, for Peter seemed
+to have come off on the others.  But when she had disentangled the
+truth of what had happened from their mixed and incoherent
+narrative, she owned that they had done quite right, and could not
+possibly have done otherwise.  Nor did she put any obstacles in the
+way of their accepting the cordial invitation with which the
+bargeman had parted from them.
+
+"Ye be here at seven to-morrow," he had said, "and I'll take you the
+entire trip to Farley and back, so I will, and not a penny to pay.
+Nineteen locks!"
+
+They did not know what locks were; but they were at the bridge at
+seven, with bread and cheese and half a soda cake, and quite a
+quarter of a leg of mutton in a basket.
+
+It was a glorious day.  The old white horse strained at the ropes,
+the barge glided smoothly and steadily through the still water.  The
+sky was blue overhead.  Mr. Bill was as nice as anyone could
+possibly be.  No one would have thought that he could be the same
+man who had held Peter by the ear.  As for Mrs. Bill, she had always
+been nice, as Bobbie said, and so had the baby, and even Spot, who
+might have bitten them quite badly if he had liked.
+
+"It was simply ripping, Mother," said Peter, when they reached home
+very happy, very tired, and very dirty, "right over that glorious
+aqueduct.  And locks--you don't know what they're like.  You sink
+into the ground and then, when you feel you're never going to stop
+going down, two great black gates open slowly, slowly--you go out,
+and there you are on the canal just like you were before."
+
+"I know," said Mother, "there are locks on the Thames.  Father and I
+used to go on the river at Marlow before we were married."
+
+"And the dear, darling, ducky baby," said Bobbie; "it let me nurse
+it for ages and ages--and it WAS so good.  Mother, I wish we had a
+baby to play with."
+
+"And everybody was so nice to us," said Phyllis, "everybody we met.
+And they say we may fish whenever we like.  And Bill is going to
+show us the way next time he's in these parts.  He says we don't
+know really."
+
+"He said YOU didn't know," said Peter; "but, Mother, he said he'd
+tell all the bargees up and down the canal that we were the real,
+right sort, and they were to treat us like good pals, as we were."
+
+"So then I said," Phyllis interrupted, "we'd always each wear a red
+ribbon when we went fishing by the canal, so they'd know it was US,
+and we were the real, right sort, and be nice to us!"
+
+"So you've made another lot of friends," said Mother; "first the
+railway and then the canal!"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Bobbie; "I think everyone in the world is friends if
+you can only get them to see you don't want to be UN-friends."
+
+"Perhaps you're right," said Mother; and she sighed.  "Come, Chicks.
+It's bedtime."
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis.  "Oh dear--and we went up there to talk about
+what we'd do for Perks's birthday.  And we haven't talked a single
+thing about it!"
+
+"No more we have," said Bobbie; "but Peter's saved Reginald Horace's
+life.  I think that's about good enough for one evening."
+
+"Bobbie would have saved him if I hadn't knocked her down; twice I
+did," said Peter, loyally.
+
+"So would I," said Phyllis, "if I'd known what to do."
+
+"Yes," said Mother, "you've saved a little child's life.  I do think
+that's enough for one evening.  Oh, my darlings, thank God YOU'RE
+all safe!"
+
+
+
+Chapter IX. The pride of Perks.
+
+
+It was breakfast-time.  Mother's face was very bright as she poured
+the milk and ladled out the porridge.
+
+"I've sold another story, Chickies," she said; "the one about the
+King of the Mussels, so there'll be buns for tea.  You can go and
+get them as soon as they're baked.  About eleven, isn't it?"
+
+Peter, Phyllis, and Bobbie exchanged glances with each other, six
+glances in all.  Then Bobbie said:--
+
+"Mother, would you mind if we didn't have the buns for tea to-night,
+but on the fifteenth?  That's next Thursday."
+
+"_I_ don't mind when you have them, dear," said Mother, "but why?"
+
+"Because it's Perks's birthday," said Bobbie; "he's thirty-two, and
+he says he doesn't keep his birthday any more, because he's got
+other things to keep--not rabbits or secrets--but the kids and the
+missus."
+
+"You mean his wife and children," said Mother.
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis; "it's the same thing, isn't it?"
+
+"And we thought we'd make a nice birthday for him.  He's been so
+awfully jolly decent to us, you know, Mother," said Peter, "and we
+agreed that next bun-day we'd ask you if we could."
+
+"But suppose there hadn't been a bun-day before the fifteenth?" said
+Mother.
+
+"Oh, then, we meant to ask you to let us anti--antipate it, and go
+without when the bun-day came."
+
+"Anticipate," said Mother.  "I see.  Certainly.  It would be nice to
+put his name on the buns with pink sugar, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Perks," said Peter, "it's not a pretty name."
+
+"His other name's Albert," said Phyllis; "I asked him once."
+
+"We might put A. P.," said Mother; "I'll show you how when the day
+comes."
+
+This was all very well as far as it went.  But even fourteen
+halfpenny buns with A. P. on them in pink sugar do not of themselves
+make a very grand celebration.
+
+"There are always flowers, of course," said Bobbie, later, when a
+really earnest council was being held on the subject in the hay-loft
+where the broken chaff-cutting machine was, and the row of holes to
+drop hay through into the hay-racks over the mangers of the stables
+below.
+
+"He's got lots of flowers of his own," said Peter.
+
+"But it's always nice to have them given you," said Bobbie, "however
+many you've got of your own.  We can use flowers for trimmings to
+the birthday.  But there must be something to trim besides buns."
+
+"Let's all be quiet and think," said Phyllis; "no one's to speak
+until it's thought of something."
+
+So they were all quiet and so very still that a brown rat thought
+that there was no one in the loft and came out very boldly.  When
+Bobbie sneezed, the rat was quite shocked and hurried away, for he
+saw that a hay-loft where such things could happen was no place for
+a respectable middle-aged rat that liked a quiet life.
+
+"Hooray!" cried Peter, suddenly, "I've got it."  He jumped up and
+kicked at the loose hay.
+
+"What?" said the others, eagerly.
+
+"Why, Perks is so nice to everybody.  There must be lots of people
+in the village who'd like to help to make him a birthday.  Let's go
+round and ask everybody."
+
+"Mother said we weren't to ask people for things," said Bobbie,
+doubtfully.
+
+"For ourselves, she meant, silly, not for other people.  I'll ask
+the old gentleman too.  You see if I don't," said Peter.
+
+"Let's ask Mother first," said Bobbie.
+
+"Oh, what's the use of bothering Mother about every little thing?"
+said Peter, "especially when she's busy.  Come on.  Let's go down to
+the village now and begin."
+
+So they went.  The old lady at the Post-office said she didn't see
+why Perks should have a birthday any more than anyone else.
+
+"No," said Bobbie, "I should like everyone to have one.  Only we
+know when his is."
+
+"Mine's to-morrow," said the old lady, "and much notice anyone will
+take of it.  Go along with you."
+
+So they went.
+
+And some people were kind, and some were crusty.  And some would
+give and some would not.  It is rather difficult work asking for
+things, even for other people, as you have no doubt found if you
+have ever tried it.
+
+When the children got home and counted up what had been given and
+what had been promised, they felt that for the first day it was not
+so bad.  Peter wrote down the lists of the things in the little
+pocket-book where he kept the numbers of his engines.  These were
+the lists:--
+
+     GIVEN.
+     A tobacco pipe from the sweet shop.
+     Half a pound of tea from the grocer's.
+     A woollen scarf slightly faded from the draper's, which was the
+other side of the grocer's.
+     A stuffed squirrel from the Doctor.
+
+     PROMISED.
+     A piece of meat from the butcher.
+     Six fresh eggs from the woman who lived in the old turnpike
+cottage.
+     A piece of honeycomb and six bootlaces from the cobbler, and an
+iron shovel from the blacksmith's.
+
+Very early next morning Bobbie got up and woke Phyllis.  This had
+been agreed on between them.  They had not told Peter because they
+thought he would think it silly.  But they told him afterwards, when
+it had turned out all right.
+
+They cut a big bunch of roses, and put it in a basket with the
+needle-book that Phyllis had made for Bobbie on her birthday, and a
+very pretty blue necktie of Phyllis's.  Then they wrote on a paper:
+'For Mrs. Ransome, with our best love, because it is her birthday,'
+and they put the paper in the basket, and they took it to the Post-
+office, and went in and put it on the counter and ran away before
+the old woman at the Post-office had time to get into her shop.
+
+When they got home Peter had grown confidential over helping Mother
+to get the breakfast and had told her their plans.
+
+"There's no harm in it," said Mother, "but it depends HOW you do it.
+I only hope he won't be offended and think it's CHARITY.  Poor
+people are very proud, you know."
+
+"It isn't because he's poor," said Phyllis; "it's because we're fond
+of him."
+
+"I'll find some things that Phyllis has outgrown," said Mother, "if
+you're quite sure you can give them to him without his being
+offended.  I should like to do some little thing for him because
+he's been so kind to you.  I can't do much because we're poor
+ourselves.  What are you writing, Bobbie?"
+
+"Nothing particular," said Bobbie, who had suddenly begun to
+scribble.  "I'm sure he'd like the things, Mother."
+
+The morning of the fifteenth was spent very happily in getting the
+buns and watching Mother make A. P. on them with pink sugar.  You
+know how it's done, of course?  You beat up whites of eggs and mix
+powdered sugar with them, and put in a few drops of cochineal.  And
+then you make a cone of clean, white paper with a little hole at the
+pointed end, and put the pink egg-sugar in at the big end.  It runs
+slowly out at the pointed end, and you write the letters with it
+just as though it were a great fat pen full of pink sugar-ink.
+
+The buns looked beautiful with A. P. on every one, and, when they
+were put in a cool oven to set the sugar, the children went up to
+the village to collect the honey and the shovel and the other
+promised things.
+
+The old lady at the Post-office was standing on her doorstep.  The
+children said "Good morning," politely, as they passed.
+
+"Here, stop a bit," she said.
+
+So they stopped.
+
+"Those roses," said she.
+
+"Did you like them?" said Phyllis; "they were as fresh as fresh.
+_I_ made the needle-book, but it was Bobbie's present."  She skipped
+joyously as she spoke.
+
+"Here's your basket," said the Post-office woman.  She went in and
+brought out the basket.  It was full of fat, red gooseberries.
+
+"I dare say Perks's children would like them," said she.
+
+"You ARE an old dear," said Phyllis, throwing her arms around the
+old lady's fat waist.  "Perks WILL be pleased."
+
+"He won't be half so pleased as I was with your needle-book and the
+tie and the pretty flowers and all," said the old lady, patting
+Phyllis's shoulder.  "You're good little souls, that you are.  Look
+here.  I've got a pram round the back in the wood-lodge.  It was got
+for my Emmie's first, that didn't live but six months, and she never
+had but that one.  I'd like Mrs. Perks to have it.  It 'ud be a help
+to her with that great boy of hers.  Will you take it along?"
+
+"OH!" said all the children together.
+
+When Mrs. Ransome had got out the perambulator and taken off the
+careful papers that covered it, and dusted it all over, she said:--
+
+"Well, there it is.  I don't know but what I'd have given it to her
+before if I'd thought of it.  Only I didn't quite know if she'd
+accept of it from me.  You tell her it was my Emmie's little one's
+pram--"
+
+"Oh, ISN'T it nice to think there is going to be a real live baby in
+it again!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Ransome, sighing, and then laughing; "here, I'll
+give you some peppermint cushions for the little ones, and then you
+run along before I give you the roof off my head and the clothes off
+my back."
+
+All the things that had been collected for Perks were packed into
+the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and
+Phyllis wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks
+lived.
+
+The house was very tidy.  On the window ledge was a jug of wild-
+flowers, big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.
+
+There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house, and a partly
+washed boy put his head round the door.
+
+"Mother's a-changing of herself," he said.
+
+"Down in a minute," a voice sounded down the narrow, freshly
+scrubbed stairs.
+
+The children waited.  Next moment the stairs creaked and Mrs. Perks
+came down, buttoning her bodice.  Her hair was brushed very smooth
+and tight, and her face shone with soap and water.
+
+"I'm a bit late changing, Miss," she said to Bobbie, "owing to me
+having had a extry clean-up to-day, along o' Perks happening to name
+its being his birthday.  I don't know what put it into his head to
+think of such a thing.  We keeps the children's birthdays, of
+course; but him and me--we're too old for such like, as a general
+rule."
+
+"We knew it was his birthday," said Peter, "and we've got some
+presents for him outside in the perambulator.
+
+As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs. Perks gasped.  When they
+were all unpacked, she surprised and horrified the children by
+sitting suddenly down on a wooden chair and bursting into tears.
+
+"Oh, don't!" said everybody; "oh, please don't!"  And Peter added,
+perhaps a little impatiently: "What on earth is the matter?  You
+don't mean to say you don't like it?"
+
+Mrs. Perks only sobbed.  The Perks children, now as shiny-faced as
+anyone could wish, stood at the wash-house door, and scowled at the
+intruders.  There was a silence, an awkward silence.
+
+"DON'T you like it?" said Peter, again, while his sisters patted
+Mrs. Perks on the back.
+
+She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.
+
+"There, there, don't you mind me.  I'M all right!" she said.  "Like
+it?  Why, it's a birthday such as Perks never 'ad, not even when 'e
+was a boy and stayed with his uncle, who was a corn chandler in his
+own account.  He failed afterwards.  Like it?  Oh--" and then she
+went on and said all sorts of things that I won't write down,
+because I am sure that Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis would not like
+me to.  Their ears got hotter and hotter, and their faces redder and
+redder, at the kind things Mrs. Perks said.  They felt they had done
+nothing to deserve all this praise.
+
+At last Peter said: "Look here, we're glad you're pleased.  But if
+you go on saying things like that, we must go home.  And we did want
+to stay and see if Mr. Perks is pleased, too.  But we can't stand
+this."
+
+"I won't say another single word," said Mrs. Perks, with a beaming
+face, "but that needn't stop me thinking, need it?  For if ever--"
+
+"Can we have a plate for the buns?" Bobbie asked abruptly.  And then
+Mrs. Perks hastily laid the table for tea, and the buns and the
+honey and the gooseberries were displayed on plates, and the roses
+were put in two glass jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs.
+Perks said, "fit for a Prince."
+
+"To think!" she said, "me getting the place tidy early, and the
+little 'uns getting the wild-flowers and all--when never did I think
+there'd be anything more for him except the ounce of his pet
+particular that I got o' Saturday and been saving up for 'im ever
+since.  Bless us! 'e IS early!"
+
+Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the little front gate.
+
+"Oh," whispered Bobbie, "let's hide in the back kitchen, and YOU
+tell him about it.  But give him the tobacco first, because you got
+it for him.  And when you've told him, we'll all come in and shout,
+'Many happy returns!'"
+
+It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite come off.  To begin
+with, there was only just time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to
+rush into the wash-house, pushing the young and open-mouthed Perks
+children in front of them.  There was not time to shut the door, so
+that, without at all meaning it, they had to listen to what went on
+in the kitchen.  The wash-house was a tight fit for the Perks
+children and the Three Chimneys children, as well as all the wash-
+house's proper furniture, including the mangle and the copper.
+
+"Hullo, old woman!" they heard Mr. Perks's voice say; "here's a
+pretty set-out!"
+
+"It's your birthday tea, Bert," said Mrs. Perks, "and here's a ounce
+of your extry particular.  I got it o' Saturday along o' your
+happening to remember it was your birthday to-day."
+
+"Good old girl!" said Mr. Perks, and there was a sound of a kiss.
+
+"But what's that pram doing here?  And what's all these bundles?
+And where did you get the sweetstuff, and--"
+
+The children did not hear what Mrs. Perks replied, because just then
+Bobbie gave a start, put her hand in her pocket, and all her body
+grew stiff with horror.
+
+"Oh!" she whispered to the others, "whatever shall we do?  I forgot
+to put the labels on any of the things!  He won't know what's from
+who.  He'll think it's all US, and that we're trying to be grand or
+charitable or something horrid."
+
+"Hush!" said Peter.
+
+And then they heard the voice of Mr. Perks, loud and rather angry.
+
+"I don't care," he said; "I won't stand it, and so I tell you
+straight."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Perks, "it's them children you make such a fuss
+about--the children from the Three Chimneys."
+
+"I don't care," said Perks, firmly, "not if it was a angel from
+Heaven.  We've got on all right all these years and no favours
+asked.  I'm not going to begin these sort of charity goings-on at my
+time of life, so don't you think it, Nell."
+
+"Oh, hush!" said poor Mrs Perks; "Bert, shut your silly tongue, for
+goodness' sake.  The all three of 'ems in the wash-house a-listening
+to every word you speaks."
+
+"Then I'll give them something to listen to," said the angry Perks;
+"I've spoke my mind to them afore now, and I'll do it again," he
+added, and he took two strides to the wash-house door, and flung it
+wide open--as wide, that is, as it would go, with the tightly packed
+children behind it.
+
+"Come out," said Perks, "come out and tell me what you mean by it.
+'Ave I ever complained to you of being short, as you comes this
+charity lay over me?"
+
+"OH!" said Phyllis, "I thought you'd be so pleased; I'll never try
+to be kind to anyone else as long as I live.  No, I won't, not
+never."
+
+She burst into tears.
+
+"We didn't mean any harm," said Peter.
+
+"It ain't what you means so much as what you does," said Perks.
+
+"Oh, DON'T!" cried Bobbie, trying hard to be braver than Phyllis,
+and to find more words than Peter had done for explaining in.  "We
+thought you'd love it.  We always have things on our birthdays."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Perks, "your own relations; that's different."
+
+"Oh, no," Bobbie answered.  "NOT our own relations.  All the
+servants always gave us things at home, and us to them when it was
+their birthdays.  And when it was mine, and Mother gave me the
+brooch like a buttercup, Mrs. Viney gave me two lovely glass pots,
+and nobody thought she was coming the charity lay over us."
+
+"If it had been glass pots here," said Perks, "I wouldn't ha' said
+so much.  It's there being all this heaps and heaps of things I
+can't stand.  No--nor won't, neither."
+
+"But they're not all from us--" said Peter, "only we forgot to put
+the labels on.  They're from all sorts of people in the village."
+
+"Who put 'em up to it, I'd like to know?" asked Perks.
+
+"Why, we did," sniffed Phyllis.
+
+Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with
+what Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy
+despair.
+
+"So you've been round telling the neighbours we can't make both ends
+meet?  Well, now you've disgraced us as deep as you can in the
+neighbourhood, you can just take the whole bag of tricks back w'ere
+it come from.  Very much obliged, I'm sure.  I don't doubt but what
+you meant it kind, but I'd rather not be acquainted with you any
+longer if it's all the same to you."  He deliberately turned the
+chair round so that his back was turned to the children.  The legs
+of the chair grated on the brick floor, and that was the only sound
+that broke the silence.
+
+Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.
+
+"Look here," she said, "this is most awful."
+
+"That's what I says," said Perks, not turning round.
+
+"Look here," said Bobbie, desperately, "we'll go if you like--and
+you needn't be friends with us any more if you don't want, but--"
+
+"WE shall always be friends with YOU, however nasty you are to us,"
+sniffed Phyllis, wildly.
+
+"Be quiet," said Peter, in a fierce aside.
+
+"But before we go," Bobbie went on desperately, "do let us show you
+the labels we wrote to put on the things."
+
+"I don't want to see no labels," said Perks, "except proper luggage
+ones in my own walk of life.  Do you think I've kept respectable and
+outer debt on what I gets, and her having to take in washing, to be
+give away for a laughing-stock to all the neighbours?"
+
+"Laughing?" said Peter; "you don't know."
+
+"You're a very hasty gentleman," whined Phyllis; "you know you were
+wrong once before, about us not telling you the secret about the
+Russian.  Do let Bobbie tell you about the labels!"
+
+"Well. Go ahead!" said Perks, grudgingly.
+
+"Well, then," said Bobbie, fumbling miserably, yet not without hope,
+in her tightly stuffed pocket, "we wrote down all the things
+everybody said when they gave us the things, with the people's
+names, because Mother said we ought to be careful--because--but I
+wrote down what she said--and you'll see."
+
+But Bobbie could not read the labels just at once.  She had to
+swallow once or twice before she could begin.
+
+Mrs. Perks had been crying steadily ever since her husband had
+opened the wash-house door.  Now she caught her breath, choked, and
+said:--
+
+"Don't you upset yourself, Missy.  _I_ know you meant it kind if he
+doesn't."
+
+"May I read the labels?" said Bobbie, crying on to the slips as she
+tried to sort them.  "Mother's first.  It says:--
+
+"'Little Clothes for Mrs. Perks's children.'  Mother said, 'I'll
+find some of Phyllis's things that she's grown out of if you're
+quite sure Mr. Perks wouldn't be offended and think it's meant for
+charity.  I'd like to do some little thing for him, because he's so
+kind to you.  I can't do much because we're poor ourselves.'"
+
+Bobbie paused.
+
+"That's all right," said Perks, "your Ma's a born lady.  We'll keep
+the little frocks, and what not, Nell."
+
+"Then there's the perambulator and the gooseberries, and the
+sweets," said Bobbie, "they're from Mrs. Ransome.  She said: 'I dare
+say Mr. Perks's children would like the sweets.  And the
+perambulator was got for my Emmie's first--it didn't live but six
+months, and she's never had but that one.  I'd like Mrs. Perks to
+have it.  It would be a help with her fine boy.  I'd have given it
+before if I'd been sure she'd accept of it from me.'  She told me to
+tell you," Bobbie added, "that it was her Emmie's little one's
+pram."
+
+"I can't send that pram back, Bert," said Mrs Perks, firmly, "and I
+won't.  So don't you ask me--"
+
+"I'm not a-asking anything," said Perks, gruffly.
+
+"Then the shovel," said Bobbie.  "Mr. James made it for you himself.
+And he said--where is it?  Oh, yes, here!  He said, 'You tell Mr.
+Perks it's a pleasure to make a little trifle for a man as is so
+much respected,' and then he said he wished he could shoe your
+children and his own children, like they do the horses, because,
+well, he knew what shoe leather was."
+
+"James is a good enough chap," said Perks.
+
+"Then the honey," said Bobbie, in haste, "and the boot-laces.  HE
+said he respected a man that paid his way--and the butcher said the
+same.  And the old turnpike woman said many was the time you'd lent
+her a hand with her garden when you were a lad--and things like that
+came home to roost--I don't know what she meant.  And everybody who
+gave anything said they liked you, and it was a very good idea of
+ours; and nobody said anything about charity or anything horrid like
+that.  And the old gentleman gave Peter a gold pound for you, and
+said you were a man who knew your work.  And I thought you'd LOVE to
+know how fond people are of you, and I never was so unhappy in my
+life.  Good-bye.  I hope you'll forgive us some day--"
+
+She could say no more, and she turned to go.
+
+"Stop," said Perks, still with his back to them; "I take back every
+word I've said contrary to what you'd wish.  Nell, set on the
+kettle."
+
+"We'll take the things away if you're unhappy about them," said
+Peter; "but I think everybody'll be most awfully disappointed, as
+well as us."
+
+"I'm not unhappy about them," said Perks; "I don't know," he added,
+suddenly wheeling the chair round and showing a very odd-looking
+screwed-up face, "I don't know as ever I was better pleased.  Not so
+much with the presents--though they're an A1 collection--but the
+kind respect of our neighbours.  That's worth having, eh, Nell?"
+
+"I think it's all worth having," said Mrs. Perks, "and you've made a
+most ridiculous fuss about nothing, Bert, if you ask me."
+
+"No, I ain't," said Perks, firmly; "if a man didn't respect hisself,
+no one wouldn't do it for him."
+
+"But everyone respects you," said Bobbie; "they all said so."
+
+"I knew you'd like it when you really understood," said Phyllis,
+brightly.
+
+"Humph!  You'll stay to tea?" said Mr. Perks.
+
+Later on Peter proposed Mr. Perks's health.  And Mr. Perks proposed
+a toast, also honoured in tea, and the toast was, "May the garland
+of friendship be ever green," which was much more poetical than
+anyone had expected from him.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+"Jolly good little kids, those," said Mr. Perks to his wife as they
+went to bed.
+
+"Oh, they're all right, bless their hearts," said his wife; "it's
+you that's the aggravatingest old thing that ever was.  I was
+ashamed of you--I tell you--"
+
+"You didn't need to be, old gal.  I climbed down handsome soon as I
+understood it wasn't charity.  But charity's what I never did abide,
+and won't neither."
+
+          *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+All sorts of people were made happy by that birthday party.  Mr.
+Perks and Mrs. Perks and the little Perkses by all the nice things
+and by the kind thoughts of their neighbours; the Three Chimneys
+children by the success, undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of
+their plan; and Mrs. Ransome every time she saw the fat Perks baby
+in the perambulator.  Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to
+thank people for their kind birthday presents, and after each visit
+felt that she had a better friend than she had thought.
+
+"Yes," said Perks, reflectively, "it's not so much what you does as
+what you means; that's what I say.  Now if it had been charity--"
+
+"Oh, drat charity," said Mrs. Perks; "nobody won't offer you
+charity, Bert, however much you was to want it, I lay.  That was
+just friendliness, that was."
+
+When the clergyman called on Mrs. Perks, she told him all about it.
+"It WAS friendliness, wasn't it, Sir?" said she.
+
+"I think," said the clergyman, "it was what is sometimes called
+loving-kindness."
+
+So you see it was all right in the end.  But if one does that sort
+of thing, one has to be careful to do it in the right way.  For, as
+Mr. Perks said, when he had time to think it over, it's not so much
+what you do, as what you mean.
+
+
+
+Chapter X. The terrible secret.
+
+
+When they first went to live at Three Chimneys, the children had
+talked a great deal about their Father, and had asked a great many
+questions about him, and what he was doing and where he was and when
+he would come home.  Mother always answered their questions as well
+as she could.  But as the time went on they grew to speak less of
+him.  Bobbie had felt almost from the first that for some strange
+miserable reason these questions hurt Mother and made her sad.  And
+little by little the others came to have this feeling, too, though
+they could not have put it into words.
+
+One day, when Mother was working so hard that she could not leave
+off even for ten minutes, Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare
+room that they called Mother's workshop.  It had hardly any
+furniture.  Just a table and a chair and a rug.  But always big pots
+of flowers on the window-sills and on the mantelpiece.  The children
+saw to that.  And from the three long uncurtained windows the
+beautiful stretch of meadow and moorland, the far violet of the
+hills, and the unchanging changefulness of cloud and sky.
+
+"Here's your tea, Mother-love," said Bobbie; "do drink it while it's
+hot."
+
+Mother laid down her pen among the pages that were scattered all
+over the table, pages covered with her writing, which was almost as
+plain as print, and much prettier.  She ran her hands into her hair,
+as if she were going to pull it out by handfuls.
+
+"Poor dear head," said Bobbie, "does it ache?"
+
+"No--yes--not much," said Mother.  "Bobbie, do you think Peter and
+Phil are FORGETTING Father?"
+
+"NO," said Bobbie, indignantly.  "Why?"
+
+"You none of you ever speak of him now."
+
+Bobbie stood first on one leg and then on the other.
+
+"We often talk about him when we're by ourselves," she said.
+
+"But not to me," said Mother.  "Why?"
+
+Bobbie did not find it easy to say why.
+
+"I--you--" she said and stopped.  She went over to the window and
+looked out.
+
+"Bobbie, come here," said her Mother, and Bobbie came.
+
+"Now," said Mother, putting her arm round Bobbie and laying her
+ruffled head against Bobbie's shoulder, "try to tell me, dear."
+
+Bobbie fidgeted.
+
+"Tell Mother."
+
+"Well, then," said Bobbie, "I thought you were so unhappy about
+Daddy not being here, it made you worse when I talked about him.  So
+I stopped doing it."
+
+"And the others?"
+
+"I don't know about the others," said Bobbie.  "I never said
+anything about THAT to them.  But I expect they felt the same about
+it as me."
+
+"Bobbie dear," said Mother, still leaning her head against her,
+"I'll tell you.  Besides parting from Father, he and I have had a
+great sorrow--oh, terrible--worse than anything you can think of,
+and at first it did hurt to hear you all talking of him as if
+everything were just the same.  But it would be much more terrible
+if you were to forget him.  That would be worse than anything."
+
+"The trouble," said Bobbie, in a very little voice--"I promised I
+would never ask you any questions, and I never have, have I?  But--
+the trouble--it won't last always?"
+
+"No," said Mother, "the worst will be over when Father comes home to
+us."
+
+"I wish I could comfort you," said Bobbie.
+
+"Oh, my dear, do you suppose you don't?  Do you think I haven't
+noticed how good you've all been, not quarrelling nearly as much as
+you used to--and all the little kind things you do for me--the
+flowers, and cleaning my shoes, and tearing up to make my bed before
+I get time to do it myself?"
+
+Bobbie HAD sometimes wondered whether Mother noticed these things.
+
+"That's nothing," she said, "to what--"
+
+"I MUST get on with my work," said Mother, giving Bobbie one last
+squeeze.  "Don't say anything to the others."
+
+That evening in the hour before bed-time instead of reading to the
+children Mother told them stories of the games she and Father used
+to have when they were children and lived near each other in the
+country--tales of the adventures of Father with Mother's brothers
+when they were all boys together.  Very funny stories they were, and
+the children laughed as they listened.
+
+"Uncle Edward died before he was grown up, didn't he?" said Phyllis,
+as Mother lighted the bedroom candles.
+
+"Yes, dear," said Mother, "you would have loved him.  He was such a
+brave boy, and so adventurous.  Always in mischief, and yet friends
+with everybody in spite of it.  And your Uncle Reggie's in Ceylon--
+yes, and Father's away, too.  But I think they'd all like to think
+we'd enjoyed talking about the things they used to do.  Don't you
+think so?"
+
+"Not Uncle Edward," said Phyllis, in a shocked tone; "he's in
+Heaven."
+
+"You don't suppose he's forgotten us and all the old times, because
+God has taken him, any more than I forget him.  Oh, no, he
+remembers.  He's only away for a little time.  We shall see him some
+day."
+
+"And Uncle Reggie--and Father, too?" said Peter.
+
+"Yes," said Mother. "Uncle Reggie and Father, too.  Good night, my
+darlings."
+
+"Good night," said everyone.  Bobbie hugged her mother more closely
+even than usual, and whispered in her ear, "Oh, I do love you so,
+Mummy--I do--I do--"
+
+When Bobbie came to think it all over, she tried not to wonder what
+the great trouble was.  But she could not always help it.  Father
+was not dead--like poor Uncle Edward--Mother had said so.  And he
+was not ill, or Mother would have been with him.  Being poor wasn't
+the trouble.  Bobbie knew it was something nearer the heart than
+money could be.
+
+"I mustn't try to think what it is," she told herself; "no, I
+mustn't.  I AM glad Mother noticed about us not quarrelling so much.
+We'll keep that up."
+
+And alas, that very afternoon she and Peter had what Peter called a
+first-class shindy.
+
+They had not been a week at Three Chimneys before they had asked
+Mother to let them have a piece of garden each for their very own,
+and she had agreed, and the south border under the peach trees had
+been divided into three pieces and they were allowed to plant
+whatever they liked there.
+
+Phyllis had planted mignonette and nasturtium and Virginia Stock in
+hers.  The seeds came up, and though they looked just like weeds,
+Phyllis believed that they would bear flowers some day.  The
+Virginia Stock justified her faith quite soon, and her garden was
+gay with a band of bright little flowers, pink and white and red and
+mauve.
+
+"I can't weed for fear I pull up the wrong things," she used to say
+comfortably; "it saves such a lot of work."
+
+Peter sowed vegetable seeds in his--carrots and onions and turnips.
+The seed was given to him by the farmer who lived in the nice black-
+and-white, wood-and-plaster house just beyond the bridge.  He kept
+turkeys and guinea fowls, and was a most amiable man.  But Peter's
+vegetables never had much of a chance, because he liked to use the
+earth of his garden for digging canals, and making forts and
+earthworks for his toy soldiers.  And the seeds of vegetables rarely
+come to much in a soil that is constantly disturbed for the purposes
+of war and irrigation.
+
+Bobbie planted rose-bushes in her garden, but all the little new
+leaves of the rose-bushes shrivelled and withered, perhaps because
+she moved them from the other part of the garden in May, which is
+not at all the right time of year for moving roses.  But she would
+not own that they were dead, and hoped on against hope, until the
+day when Perks came up to see the garden, and told her quite plainly
+that all her roses were as dead as doornails.
+
+"Only good for bonfires, Miss," he said.  "You just dig 'em up and
+burn 'em, and I'll give you some nice fresh roots outer my garden;
+pansies, and stocks, and sweet willies, and forget-me-nots.  I'll
+bring 'em along to-morrow if you get the ground ready."
+
+So next day she set to work, and that happened to be the day when
+Mother had praised her and the others about not quarrelling.  She
+moved the rose-bushes and carried them to the other end of the
+garden, where the rubbish heap was that they meant to make a bonfire
+of when Guy Fawkes' Day came.
+
+Meanwhile Peter had decided to flatten out all his forts and
+earthworks, with a view to making a model of the railway-tunnel,
+cutting, embankment, canal, aqueduct, bridges, and all.
+
+So when Bobbie came back from her last thorny journey with the dead
+rose-bushes, he had got the rake and was using it busily.
+
+"_I_ was using the rake," said Bobbie.
+
+"Well, I'm using it now," said Peter.
+
+"But I had it first," said Bobbie.
+
+"Then it's my turn now," said Peter.  And that was how the quarrel
+began.
+
+"You're always being disagreeable about nothing," said Peter, after
+some heated argument.
+
+"I had the rake first," said Bobbie, flushed and defiant, holding on
+to its handle.
+
+"Don't--I tell you I said this morning I meant to have it.  Didn't
+I, Phil?"
+
+Phyllis said she didn't want to be mixed up in their rows.  And
+instantly, of course, she was.
+
+"If you remember, you ought to say."
+
+"Of course she doesn't remember--but she might say so."
+
+"I wish I'd had a brother instead of two whiny little kiddy
+sisters," said Peter.  This was always recognised as indicating the
+high-water mark of Peter's rage.
+
+Bobbie made the reply she always made to it.
+
+"I can't think why little boys were ever invented," and just as she
+said it she looked up, and saw the three long windows of Mother's
+workshop flashing in the red rays of the sun.  The sight brought
+back those words of praise:--
+
+"You don't quarrel like you used to do."
+
+"OH!" cried Bobbie, just as if she had been hit, or had caught her
+finger in a door, or had felt the hideous sharp beginnings of
+toothache.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Phyllis.
+
+Bobbie wanted to say:  "Don't let's quarrel.  Mother hates it so,"
+but though she tried hard, she couldn't.  Peter was looking too
+disagreeable and insulting.
+
+"Take the horrid rake, then," was the best she could manage.  And
+she suddenly let go her hold on the handle.  Peter had been holding
+on to it too firmly and pullingly, and now that the pull the other
+way was suddenly stopped, he staggered and fell over backward, the
+teeth of the rake between his feet.
+
+"Serve you right," said Bobbie, before she could stop herself.
+
+Peter lay still for half a moment--long enough to frighten Bobbie a
+little.  Then he frightened her a little more, for he sat up--
+screamed once--turned rather pale, and then lay back and began to
+shriek, faintly but steadily.  It sounded exactly like a pig being
+killed a quarter of a mile off.
+
+Mother put her head out of the window, and it wasn't half a minute
+after that she was in the garden kneeling by the side of Peter, who
+never for an instant ceased to squeal.
+
+"What happened, Bobbie?" Mother asked.
+
+"It was the rake," said Phyllis.  "Peter was pulling at it, so was
+Bobbie, and she let go and he went over."
+
+"Stop that noise, Peter," said Mother.  "Come.  Stop at once."
+
+Peter used up what breath he had left in a last squeal and stopped.
+
+"Now," said Mother, "are you hurt?"
+
+"If he was really hurt, he wouldn't make such a fuss," said Bobbie,
+still trembling with fury; "he's not a coward!"
+
+"I think my foot's broken off, that's all," said Peter, huffily, and
+sat up.  Then he turned quite white.  Mother put her arm round him.
+
+"He IS hurt," she said; "he's fainted.  Here, Bobbie, sit down and
+take his head on your lap."
+
+Then Mother undid Peter's boots.  As she took the right one off,
+something dripped from his foot on to the ground.  It was red blood.
+And when the stocking came off there were three red wounds in
+Peter's foot and ankle, where the teeth of the rake had bitten him,
+and his foot was covered with red smears.
+
+"Run for water--a basinful," said Mother, and Phyllis ran.  She
+upset most of the water out of the basin in her haste, and had to
+fetch more in a jug.
+
+Peter did not open his eyes again till Mother had tied her
+handkerchief round his foot, and she and Bobbie had carried him in
+and laid him on the brown wooden settle in the dining-room.  By this
+time Phyllis was halfway to the Doctor's.
+
+Mother sat by Peter and bathed his foot and talked to him, and
+Bobbie went out and got tea ready, and put on the kettle.
+
+"It's all I can do," she told herself.  "Oh, suppose Peter should
+die, or be a helpless cripple for life, or have to walk with
+crutches, or wear a boot with a sole like a log of wood!"
+
+She stood by the back door reflecting on these gloomy possibilities,
+her eyes fixed on the water-butt.
+
+"I wish I'd never been born," she said, and she said it out loud.
+
+"Why, lawk a mercy, what's that for?" asked a voice, and Perks stood
+before her with a wooden trug basket full of green-leaved things and
+soft, loose earth.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said.  "Peter's hurt his foot with a rake--three
+great gaping wounds, like soldiers get.  And it was partly my
+fault."
+
+"That it wasn't, I'll go bail," said Perks.  "Doctor seen him?"
+
+"Phyllis has gone for the Doctor."
+
+"He'll be all right; you see if he isn't," said Perks.  "Why, my
+father's second cousin had a hay-fork run into him, right into his
+inside, and he was right as ever in a few weeks, all except his
+being a bit weak in the head afterwards, and they did say that it
+was along of his getting a touch of the sun in the hay-field, and
+not the fork at all.  I remember him well.  A kind-'earted chap, but
+soft, as you might say."
+
+Bobbie tried to let herself be cheered by this heartening
+reminiscence.
+
+"Well," said Perks, "you won't want to be bothered with gardening
+just this minute, I dare say.  You show me where your garden is, and
+I'll pop the bits of stuff in for you.  And I'll hang about, if I
+may make so free, to see the Doctor as he comes out and hear what he
+says.  You cheer up, Missie.  I lay a pound he ain't hurt, not to
+speak of."
+
+But he was.  The Doctor came and looked at the foot and bandaged it
+beautifully, and said that Peter must not put it to the ground for
+at least a week.
+
+"He won't be lame, or have to wear crutches or a lump on his foot,
+will he?" whispered Bobbie, breathlessly, at the door.
+
+"My aunt!  No!" said Dr. Forrest; "he'll be as nimble as ever on his
+pins in a fortnight.  Don't you worry, little Mother Goose."
+
+It was when Mother had gone to the gate with the Doctor to take his
+last instructions and Phyllis was filling the kettle for tea, that
+Peter and Bobbie found themselves alone.
+
+"He says you won't be lame or anything," said Bobbie.
+
+"Oh, course I shan't, silly," said Peter, very much relieved all the
+same.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I AM so sorry," said Bobbie, after a pause.
+
+"That's all right," said Peter, gruffly.
+
+"It was ALL my fault," said Bobbie.
+
+"Rot," said Peter.
+
+"If we hadn't quarrelled, it wouldn't have happened.  I knew it was
+wrong to quarrel.  I wanted to say so, but somehow I couldn't."
+
+"Don't drivel," said Peter.  "I shouldn't have stopped if you HAD
+said it.  Not likely.  And besides, us rowing hadn't anything to do
+with it.  I might have caught my foot in the hoe, or taken off my
+fingers in the chaff-cutting machine or blown my nose off with
+fireworks.  It would have been hurt just the same whether we'd been
+rowing or not."
+
+"But I knew it was wrong to quarrel," said Bobbie, in tears, "and
+now you're hurt and--"
+
+"Now look here," said Peter, firmly, "you just dry up.  If you're
+not careful, you'll turn into a beastly little Sunday-school prig,
+so I tell you."
+
+"I don't mean to be a prig.  But it's so hard not to be when you're
+really trying to be good."
+
+(The Gentle Reader may perhaps have suffered from this difficulty.)
+
+"Not it," said Peter; "it's a jolly good thing it wasn't you was
+hurt.  I'm glad it was ME.  There!  If it had been you, you'd have
+been lying on the sofa looking like a suffering angel and being the
+light of the anxious household and all that.  And I couldn't have
+stood it."
+
+"No, I shouldn't," said Bobbie.
+
+"Yes, you would," said Peter.
+
+"I tell you I shouldn't."
+
+"I tell you you would."
+
+"Oh, children," said Mother's voice at the door.  "Quarrelling
+again?  Already?"
+
+"We aren't quarrelling--not really," said Peter.  "I wish you
+wouldn't think it's rows every time we don't agree!"  When Mother
+had gone out again, Bobbie broke out:--
+
+"Peter, I AM sorry you're hurt.  But you ARE a beast to say I'm a
+prig."
+
+"Well," said Peter unexpectedly, "perhaps I am.  You did say I
+wasn't a coward, even when you were in such a wax.  The only thing
+is--don't you be a prig, that's all.  You keep your eyes open and if
+you feel priggishness coming on just stop in time.  See?"
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie, "I see."
+
+"Then let's call it Pax," said Peter, magnanimously:  "bury the
+hatchet in the fathoms of the past.  Shake hands on it.  I say,
+Bobbie, old chap, I am tired."
+
+He was tired for many days after that, and the settle seemed hard
+and uncomfortable in spite of all the pillows and bolsters and soft
+folded rugs.  It was terrible not to be able to go out.  They moved
+the settle to the window, and from there Peter could see the smoke
+of the trains winding along the valley.  But he could not see the
+trains.
+
+At first Bobbie found it quite hard to be as nice to him as she
+wanted to be, for fear he should think her priggish.  But that soon
+wore off, and both she and Phyllis were, as he observed, jolly good
+sorts.  Mother sat with him when his sisters were out.  And the
+words, "he's not a coward," made Peter determined not to make any
+fuss about the pain in his foot, though it was rather bad,
+especially at night.
+
+Praise helps people very much, sometimes.
+
+There were visitors, too.  Mrs. Perks came up to ask how he was, and
+so did the Station Master, and several of the village people.  But
+the time went slowly, slowly.
+
+"I do wish there was something to read," said Peter.  "I've read all
+our books fifty times over."
+
+"I'll go to the Doctor's," said Phyllis; "he's sure to have some."
+
+"Only about how to be ill, and about people's nasty insides, I
+expect," said Peter.
+
+"Perks has a whole heap of Magazines that came out of trains when
+people are tired of them," said Bobbie.  "I'll run down and ask
+him."
+
+So the girls went their two ways.
+
+Bobbie found Perks busy cleaning lamps.
+
+"And how's the young gent?" said he.
+
+"Better, thanks," said Bobbie, "but he's most frightfully bored.  I
+came to ask if you'd got any Magazines you could lend him."
+
+"There, now," said Perks, regretfully, rubbing his ear with a black
+and oily lump of cotton waste, "why didn't I think of that, now?  I
+was trying to think of something as 'ud amuse him only this morning,
+and I couldn't think of anything better than a guinea-pig.  And a
+young chap I know's going to fetch that over for him this tea-time."
+
+"How lovely!  A real live guinea!  He will be pleased.  But he'd
+like the Magazines as well."
+
+"That's just it," said Perks.  "I've just sent the pick of 'em to
+Snigson's boy--him what's just getting over the pewmonia.  But I've
+lots of illustrated papers left."
+
+He turned to the pile of papers in the corner and took up a heap six
+inches thick.
+
+"There!" he said.  "I'll just slip a bit of string and a bit of
+paper round 'em."
+
+He pulled an old newspaper from the pile and spread it on the table,
+and made a neat parcel of it.
+
+"There," said he, "there's lots of pictures, and if he likes to mess
+'em about with his paint-box, or coloured chalks or what not, why,
+let him.  _I_ don't want 'em."
+
+"You're a dear," said Bobbie, took the parcel, and started.  The
+papers were heavy, and when she had to wait at the level-crossing
+while a train went by, she rested the parcel on the top of the gate.
+And idly she looked at the printing on the paper that the parcel was
+wrapped in.
+
+Suddenly she clutched the parcel tighter and bent her head over it.
+It seemed like some horrible dream.  She read on--the bottom of the
+column was torn off--she could read no farther.
+
+She never remembered how she got home.  But she went on tiptoe to
+her room and locked the door.  Then she undid the parcel and read
+that printed column again, sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands
+and feet icy cold and her face burning.  When she had read all there
+was, she drew a long, uneven breath.
+
+"So now I know," she said.
+
+What she had read was headed, 'End of the Trial.  Verdict.
+Sentence.'
+
+The name of the man who had been tried was the name of her Father.
+The verdict was 'Guilty.'  And the sentence was 'Five years' Penal
+Servitude.'
+
+"Oh, Daddy," she whispered, crushing the paper hard, "it's not true-
+-I don't believe it.  You never did it!  Never, never, never!"
+
+There was a hammering on the door.
+
+"What is it?" said Bobbie.
+
+"It's me," said the voice of Phyllis; "tea's ready, and a boy's
+brought Peter a guinea-pig.  Come along down."
+
+And Bobbie had to.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI. The hound in the red jersey.
+
+
+Bobbie knew the secret now.  A sheet of old newspaper wrapped round
+a parcel--just a little chance like that--had given the secret to
+her.  And she had to go down to tea and pretend that there was
+nothing the matter.  The pretence was bravely made, but it wasn't
+very successful.
+
+For when she came in, everyone looked up from tea and saw her pink-
+lidded eyes and her pale face with red tear-blotches on it.
+
+"My darling," cried Mother, jumping up from the tea-tray, "whatever
+IS the matter?"
+
+"My head aches, rather," said Bobbie.  And indeed it did.
+
+"Has anything gone wrong?" Mother asked.
+
+"I'm all right, really," said Bobbie, and she telegraphed to her
+Mother from her swollen eyes this brief, imploring message--"NOT
+before the others!"
+
+Tea was not a cheerful meal.  Peter was so distressed by the obvious
+fact that something horrid had happened to Bobbie that he limited
+his speech to repeating, "More bread and butter, please," at
+startlingly short intervals.  Phyllis stroked her sister's hand
+under the table to express sympathy, and knocked her cup over as she
+did it.  Fetching a cloth and wiping up the spilt milk helped Bobbie
+a little.  But she thought that tea would never end.  Yet at last it
+did end, as all things do at last, and when Mother took out the
+tray, Bobbie followed her.
+
+"She's gone to own up," said Phyllis to Peter; "I wonder what she's
+done."
+
+"Broken something, I suppose," said Peter, "but she needn't be so
+silly over it.  Mother never rows for accidents.  Listen!  Yes,
+they're going upstairs.  She's taking Mother up to show her--the
+water-jug with storks on it, I expect it is."
+
+Bobbie, in the kitchen, had caught hold of Mother's hand as she set
+down the tea-things.
+
+"What is it?" Mother asked.
+
+But Bobbie only said, "Come upstairs, come up where nobody can hear
+us."
+
+When she had got Mother alone in her room she locked the door and
+then stood quite still, and quite without words.
+
+All through tea she had been thinking of what to say; she had
+decided that "I know all," or "All is known to me," or "The terrible
+secret is a secret no longer," would be the proper thing.  But now
+that she and her Mother and that awful sheet of newspaper were alone
+in the room together, she found that she could say nothing.
+
+Suddenly she went to Mother and put her arms round her and began to
+cry again.  And still she could find no words, only, "Oh, Mammy, oh,
+Mammy, oh, Mammy," over and over again.
+
+Mother held her very close and waited.
+
+Suddenly Bobbie broke away from her and went to her bed.  From under
+her mattress she pulled out the paper she had hidden there, and held
+it out, pointing to her Father's name with a finger that shook.
+
+"Oh, Bobbie," Mother cried, when one little quick look had shown her
+what it was, "you don't BELIEVE it?  You don't believe Daddy did
+it?"
+
+"NO," Bobbie almost shouted.  She had stopped crying.
+
+"That's all right," said Mother.  "It's not true.  And they've shut
+him up in prison, but he's done nothing wrong.  He's good and noble
+and honourable, and he belongs to us.  We have to think of that, and
+be proud of him, and wait."
+
+Again Bobbie clung to her Mother, and again only one word came to
+her, but now that word was "Daddy," and "Oh, Daddy, oh, Daddy, oh,
+Daddy!" again and again.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me, Mammy?" she asked presently.
+
+"Are you going to tell the others?" Mother asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--"
+
+"Exactly," said Mother; "so you understand why I didn't tell you.
+We two must help each other to be brave."
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie; "Mother, will it make you more unhappy if you
+tell me all about it?  I want to understand."
+
+So then, sitting cuddled up close to her Mother, Bobbie heard "all
+about it."  She heard how those men, who had asked to see Father on
+that remembered last night when the Engine was being mended, had
+come to arrest him, charging him with selling State secrets to the
+Russians--with being, in fact, a spy and a traitor.  She heard about
+the trial, and about the evidence--letters, found in Father's desk
+at the office, letters that convinced the jury that Father was
+guilty.
+
+"Oh, how could they look at him and believe it!" cried Bobbie; "and
+how could ANY one do such a thing!"
+
+"SOMEONE did it," said Mother, "and all the evidence was against
+Father.  Those letters--"
+
+"Yes.  How did the letters get into his desk?"
+
+"Someone put them there.  And the person who put them there was the
+person who was really guilty."
+
+"HE must be feeling pretty awful all this time," said Bobbie,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't believe he had any feelings," Mother said hotly; "he
+couldn't have done a thing like that if he had."
+
+"Perhaps he just shoved the letters into the desk to hide them when
+he thought he was going to be found out.  Why don't you tell the
+lawyers, or someone, that it must have been that person?  There
+wasn't anyone that would have hurt Father on purpose, was there?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't know.  The man under him who got Daddy's
+place when he--when the awful thing happened--he was always jealous
+of your Father because Daddy was so clever and everyone thought such
+a lot of him.  And Daddy never quite trusted that man."
+
+"Couldn't we explain all that to someone?"
+
+"Nobody will listen," said Mother, very bitterly, "nobody at all.
+Do you suppose I've not tried everything?  No, my dearest, there's
+nothing to be done.  All we can do, you and I and Daddy, is to be
+brave, and patient, and--" she spoke very softly--"to pray, Bobbie,
+dear."
+
+"Mother, you've got very thin," said Bobbie, abruptly.
+
+"A little, perhaps."
+
+"And oh," said Bobbie, "I do think you're the bravest person in the
+world as well as the nicest!"
+
+"We won't talk of all this any more, will we, dear?" said Mother;
+"we must bear it and be brave.  And, darling, try not to think of
+it.  Try to be cheerful, and to amuse yourself and the others.  It's
+much easier for me if you can be a little bit happy and enjoy
+things.  Wash your poor little round face, and let's go out into the
+garden for a bit."
+
+The other two were very gentle and kind to Bobbie.  And they did not
+ask her what was the matter.  This was Peter's idea, and he had
+drilled Phyllis, who would have asked a hundred questions if she had
+been left to herself.
+
+A week later Bobbie managed to get away alone.  And once more she
+wrote a letter.  And once more it was to the old gentleman.
+
+"My dear Friend," she said, "you see what is in this paper.  It is
+not true.  Father never did it.  Mother says someone put the papers
+in Father's desk, and she says the man under him that got Father's
+place afterwards was jealous of Father, and Father suspected him a
+long time.  But nobody listens to a word she says, but you are so
+good and clever, and you found out about the Russian gentleman's
+wife directly.  Can't you find out who did the treason because he
+wasn't Father upon my honour; he is an Englishman and uncapable to
+do such things, and then they would let Father out of prison.  It is
+dreadful, and Mother is getting so thin.  She told us once to pray
+for all prisoners and captives.  I see now.  Oh, do help me--there
+is only just Mother and me know, and we can't do anything.  Peter
+and Phil don't know.  I'll pray for you twice every day as long as I
+live if you'll only try--just try to find out.  Think if it was YOUR
+Daddy, what you would feel.  Oh, do, do, DO help me.  With love
+          "I remain Your affectionately little friend
+                    "Roberta.
+
+P.S. Mother would send her kind regards if she knew I am writing--
+but it is no use telling her I am, in case you can't do anything.
+But I know you will.  Bobbie with best love."
+
+She cut the account of her Father's trial out of the newspaper with
+Mother's big cutting-out scissors, and put it in the envelope with
+her letter.
+
+Then she took it down to the station, going out the back way and
+round by the road, so that the others should not see her and offer
+to come with her, and she gave the letter to the Station Master to
+give to the old gentleman next morning.
+
+"Where HAVE you been?" shouted Peter, from the top of the yard wall
+where he and Phyllis were.
+
+"To the station, of course," said Bobbie; "give us a hand, Pete."
+
+She set her foot on the lock of the yard door.  Peter reached down a
+hand.
+
+"What on earth?" she asked as she reached the wall-top--for Phyllis
+and Peter were very muddy.  A lump of wet clay lay between them on
+the wall, they had each a slip of slate in a very dirty hand, and
+behind Peter, out of the reach of accidents, were several strange
+rounded objects rather like very fat sausages, hollow, but closed up
+at one end.
+
+"It's nests," said Peter, "swallows' nests.  We're going to dry them
+in the oven and hang them up with string under the eaves of the
+coach-house."
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis; "and then we're going to save up all the wool
+and hair we can get, and in the spring we'll line them, and then how
+pleased the swallows will be!"
+
+"I've often thought people don't do nearly enough for dumb animals,"
+said Peter with an air of virtue.  "I do think people might have
+thought of making nests for poor little swallows before this."
+
+"Oh," said Bobbie, vaguely, "if everybody thought of everything,
+there'd be nothing left for anybody else to think about."
+
+"Look at the nests--aren't they pretty?" said Phyllis, reaching
+across Peter to grasp a nest.
+
+"Look out, Phil, you goat," said her brother.  But it was too late;
+her strong little fingers had crushed the nest.
+
+"There now," said Peter.
+
+"Never mind," said Bobbie.
+
+"It IS one of my own," said Phyllis, "so you needn't jaw, Peter.
+Yes, we've put our initial names on the ones we've done, so that the
+swallows will know who they've got to be so grateful to and fond
+of."
+
+"Swallows can't read, silly," said Peter.
+
+"Silly yourself," retorted Phyllis; "how do you know?"
+
+"Who thought of making the nests, anyhow?" shouted Peter.
+
+"I did," screamed Phyllis.
+
+"Nya," rejoined Peter, "you only thought of making hay ones and
+sticking them in the ivy for the sparrows, and they'd have been
+sopping LONG before egg-laying time.  It was me said clay and
+swallows."
+
+"I don't care what you said."
+
+"Look," said Bobbie, "I've made the nest all right again.  Give me
+the bit of stick to mark your initial name on it.  But how can you?
+Your letter and Peter's are the same.  P. for Peter, P. for
+Phyllis."
+
+"I put F. for Phyllis," said the child of that name.  "That's how it
+sounds.  The swallows wouldn't spell Phyllis with a P., I'm certain-
+sure."
+
+"They can't spell at all," Peter was still insisting.
+
+"Then why do you see them always on Christmas cards and valentines
+with letters round their necks?  How would they know where to go if
+they couldn't read?"
+
+"That's only in pictures.  You never saw one really with letters
+round its neck."
+
+"Well, I have a pigeon, then; at least Daddy told me they did.  Only
+it was under their wings and not round their necks, but it comes to
+the same thing, and--"
+
+"I say," interrupted Bobbie, "there's to be a paperchase to-morrow."
+
+"Who?" Peter asked.
+
+"Grammar School.  Perks thinks the hare will go along by the line at
+first.  We might go along the cutting.  You can see a long way from
+there."
+
+The paperchase was found to be a more amusing subject of
+conversation than the reading powers of swallows.  Bobbie had hoped
+it might be.  And next morning Mother let them take their lunch and
+go out for the day to see the paperchase.
+
+"If we go to the cutting," said Peter, "we shall see the workmen,
+even if we miss the paperchase."
+
+Of course it had taken some time to get the line clear from the
+rocks and earth and trees that had fallen on it when the great
+landslip happened.  That was the occasion, you will remember, when
+the three children saved the train from being wrecked by waving six
+little red-flannel-petticoat flags.  It is always interesting to
+watch people working, especially when they work with such
+interesting things as spades and picks and shovels and planks and
+barrows, when they have cindery red fires in iron pots with round
+holes in them, and red lamps hanging near the works at night.  Of
+course the children were never out at night; but once, at dusk, when
+Peter had got out of his bedroom skylight on to the roof, he had
+seen the red lamp shining far away at the edge of the cutting.  The
+children had often been down to watch the work, and this day the
+interest of picks and spades, and barrows being wheeled along
+planks, completely put the paperchase out of their heads, so that
+they quite jumped when a voice just behind them panted, "Let me
+pass, please."  It was the hare--a big-boned, loose-limbed boy, with
+dark hair lying flat on a very damp forehead.  The bag of torn paper
+under his arm was fastened across one shoulder by a strap.  The
+children stood back.  The hare ran along the line, and the workmen
+leaned on their picks to watch him.  He ran on steadily and
+disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel.
+
+"That's against the by-laws," said the foreman.
+
+"Why worry?" said the oldest workman; "live and let live's what I
+always say.  Ain't you never been young yourself, Mr. Bates?"
+
+"I ought to report him," said the foreman.
+
+"Why spoil sport's what I always say."
+
+"Passengers are forbidden to cross the line on any pretence,"
+murmured the foreman, doubtfully.
+
+"He ain't no passenger," said one of the workmen.
+
+"Nor 'e ain't crossed the line, not where we could see 'im do it,"
+said another.
+
+"Nor yet 'e ain't made no pretences," said a third.
+
+"And," said the oldest workman, "'e's outer sight now.  What the eye
+don't see the 'art needn't take no notice of's what I always say."
+
+And now, following the track of the hare by the little white blots
+of scattered paper, came the hounds.  There were thirty of them, and
+they all came down the steep, ladder-like steps by ones and twos and
+threes and sixes and sevens.  Bobbie and Phyllis and Peter counted
+them as they passed.  The foremost ones hesitated a moment at the
+foot of the ladder, then their eyes caught the gleam of scattered
+whiteness along the line and they turned towards the tunnel, and, by
+ones and twos and threes and sixes and sevens, disappeared in the
+dark mouth of it.  The last one, in a red jersey, seemed to be
+extinguished by the darkness like a candle that is blown out.
+
+"They don't know what they're in for," said the foreman; "it isn't
+so easy running in the dark.  The tunnel takes two or three turns."
+
+"They'll take a long time to get through, you think?" Peter asked.
+
+"An hour or more, I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"Then let's cut across the top and see them come out at the other
+end," said Peter; "we shall get there long before they do."
+
+The counsel seemed good, and they went.
+
+They climbed the steep steps from which they had picked the wild
+cherry blossom for the grave of the little wild rabbit, and reaching
+the top of the cutting, set their faces towards the hill through
+which the tunnel was cut.  It was stiff work.
+
+"It's like Alps," said Bobbie, breathlessly.
+
+"Or Andes," said Peter.
+
+"It's like Himmy what's its names?" gasped Phyllis.  "Mount
+Everlasting.  Do let's stop."
+
+"Stick to it," panted Peter; "you'll get your second wind in a
+minute."
+
+Phyllis consented to stick to it--and on they went, running when the
+turf was smooth and the slope easy, climbing over stones, helping
+themselves up rocks by the branches of trees, creeping through
+narrow openings between tree trunks and rocks, and so on and on, up
+and up, till at last they stood on the very top of the hill where
+they had so often wished to be.
+
+"Halt!" cried Peter, and threw himself flat on the grass.  For the
+very top of the hill was a smooth, turfed table-land, dotted with
+mossy rocks and little mountain-ash trees.
+
+The girls also threw themselves down flat.
+
+"Plenty of time," Peter panted; "the rest's all down hill."
+
+When they were rested enough to sit up and look round them, Bobbie
+cried:--
+
+"Oh, look!"
+
+"What at?" said Phyllis.
+
+"The view," said Bobbie.
+
+"I hate views," said Phyllis, "don't you, Peter?"
+
+"Let's get on," said Peter.
+
+"But this isn't like a view they take you to in carriages when
+you're at the seaside, all sea and sand and bare hills.  It's like
+the 'coloured counties' in one of Mother's poetry books."
+
+"It's not so dusty," said Peter; "look at the Aqueduct straddling
+slap across the valley like a giant centipede, and then the towns
+sticking their church spires up out of the trees like pens out of an
+inkstand.  _I_ think it's more like
+
+     "There could he see the banners
+      Of twelve fair cities shine."
+
+"I love it," said Bobbie; "it's worth the climb."
+
+"The paperchase is worth the climb," said Phyllis, "if we don't lose
+it.  Let's get on.  It's all down hill now."
+
+"_I_ said that ten minutes ago," said Peter.
+
+"Well, I'VE said it now," said Phyllis; "come on."
+
+"Loads of time," said Peter.  And there was.  For when they had got
+down to a level with the top of the tunnel's mouth--they were a
+couple of hundred yards out of their reckoning and had to creep
+along the face of the hill--there was no sign of the hare or the
+hounds.
+
+"They've gone long ago, of course," said Phyllis, as they leaned on
+the brick parapet above the tunnel.
+
+"I don't think so," said Bobbie, "but even if they had, it's ripping
+here, and we shall see the trains come out of the tunnel like
+dragons out of lairs.  We've never seen that from the top side
+before."
+
+"No more we have," said Phyllis, partially appeased.
+
+It was really a most exciting place to be in.  The top of the tunnel
+seemed ever so much farther from the line than they had expected,
+and it was like being on a bridge, but a bridge overgrown with
+bushes and creepers and grass and wild-flowers.
+
+"I KNOW the paperchase has gone long ago," said Phyllis every two
+minutes, and she hardly knew whether she was pleased or disappointed
+when Peter, leaning over the parapet, suddenly cried:--
+
+"Look out.  Here he comes!"
+
+They all leaned over the sun-warmed brick wall in time to see the
+hare, going very slowly, come out from the shadow of the tunnel.
+
+"There, now," said Peter, "what did I tell you?  Now for the
+hounds!"
+
+Very soon came the hounds--by ones and twos and threes and sixes and
+sevens--and they also were going slowly and seemed very tired.  Two
+or three who lagged far behind came out long after the others.
+
+"There," said Bobbie, "that's all--now what shall we do?"
+
+"Go along into the tulgy wood over there and have lunch," said
+Phyllis; "we can see them for miles from up here."
+
+"Not yet," said Peter.  "That's not the last.  There's the one in
+the red jersey to come yet.  Let's see the last of them come out."
+
+But though they waited and waited and waited, the boy in the red
+jersey did not appear.
+
+"Oh, let's have lunch," said Phyllis; "I've got a pain in my front
+with being so hungry.  You must have missed seeing the red-jerseyed
+one when he came out with the others--"
+
+But Bobbie and Peter agreed that he had not come out with the
+others.
+
+"Let's get down to the tunnel mouth," said Peter; "then perhaps we
+shall see him coming along from the inside.  I expect he felt spun-
+chuck, and rested in one of the manholes.  You stay up here and
+watch, Bob, and when I signal from below, you come down.  We might
+miss seeing him on the way down, with all these trees."
+
+So the others climbed down and Bobbie waited till they signalled to
+her from the line below.  And then she, too, scrambled down the
+roundabout slippery path among roots and moss till she stepped out
+between two dogwood trees and joined the others on the line.  And
+still there was no sign of the hound with the red jersey.
+
+"Oh, do, DO let's have something to eat," wailed Phyllis.  "I shall
+die if you don't, and then you'll be sorry."
+
+"Give her the sandwiches, for goodness' sake, and stop her silly
+mouth," said Peter, not quite unkindly.  "Look here," he added,
+turning to Bobbie, "perhaps we'd better have one each, too.  We may
+need all our strength.  Not more than one, though.  There's no
+time."
+
+"What?" asked Bobbie, her mouth already full, for she was just as
+hungry as Phyllis.
+
+"Don't you see," replied Peter, impressively, "that red-jerseyed
+hound has had an accident--that's what it is.  Perhaps even as we
+speak he's lying with his head on the metals, an unresisting prey to
+any passing express--"
+
+"Oh, don't try to talk like a book," cried Bobbie, bolting what was
+left of her sandwich; "come on.  Phil, keep close behind me, and if
+a train comes, stand flat against the tunnel wall and hold your
+petticoats close to you."
+
+"Give me one more sandwich," pleaded Phyllis, "and I will."
+
+"I'm going first," said Peter; "it was my idea," and he went.
+
+Of course you know what going into a tunnel is like?  The engine
+gives a scream and then suddenly the noise of the running, rattling
+train changes and grows different and much louder.  Grown-up people
+pull up the windows and hold them by the strap.  The railway
+carriage suddenly grows like night--with lamps, of course, unless
+you are in a slow local train, in which case lamps are not always
+provided.  Then by and by the darkness outside the carriage window
+is touched by puffs of cloudy whiteness, then you see a blue light
+on the walls of the tunnel, then the sound of the moving train
+changes once more, and you are out in the good open air again, and
+grown-ups let the straps go.  The windows, all dim with the yellow
+breath of the tunnel, rattle down into their places, and you see
+once more the dip and catch of the telegraph wires beside the line,
+and the straight-cut hawthorn hedges with the tiny baby trees
+growing up out of them every thirty yards.
+
+All this, of course, is what a tunnel means when you are in a train.
+But everything is quite different when you walk into a tunnel on
+your own feet, and tread on shifting, sliding stones and gravel on a
+path that curves downwards from the shining metals to the wall.
+Then you see slimy, oozy trickles of water running down the inside
+of the tunnel, and you notice that the bricks are not red or brown,
+as they are at the tunnel's mouth, but dull, sticky, sickly green.
+Your voice, when you speak, is quite changed from what it was out in
+the sunshine, and it is a long time before the tunnel is quite dark.
+
+It was not yet quite dark in the tunnel when Phyllis caught at
+Bobbie's skirt, ripping out half a yard of gathers, but no one
+noticed this at the time.
+
+"I want to go back," she said, "I don't like it.  It'll be pitch
+dark in a minute.  I WON'T go on in the dark.  I don't care what you
+say, I WON'T."
+
+"Don't be a silly cuckoo," said Peter; "I've got a candle end and
+matches, and--what's that?"
+
+"That" was a low, humming sound on the railway line, a trembling of
+the wires beside it, a buzzing, humming sound that grew louder and
+louder as they listened.
+
+"It's a train," said Bobbie.
+
+"Which line?"
+
+"Let me go back," cried Phyllis, struggling to get away from the
+hand by which Bobbie held her.
+
+"Don't be a coward," said Bobbie; "it's quite safe.  Stand back."
+
+"Come on," shouted Peter, who was a few yards ahead.  "Quick!
+Manhole!"
+
+The roar of the advancing train was now louder than the noise you
+hear when your head is under water in the bath and both taps are
+running, and you are kicking with your heels against the bath's tin
+sides.  But Peter had shouted for all he was worth, and Bobbie heard
+him.  She dragged Phyllis along to the manhole.  Phyllis, of course,
+stumbled over the wires and grazed both her legs.  But they dragged
+her in, and all three stood in the dark, damp, arched recess while
+the train roared louder and louder.  It seemed as if it would deafen
+them.  And, in the distance, they could see its eyes of fire growing
+bigger and brighter every instant.
+
+"It IS a dragon--I always knew it was--it takes its own shape in
+here, in the dark," shouted Phyllis.  But nobody heard her.  You see
+the train was shouting, too, and its voice was bigger than hers.
+
+And now, with a rush and a roar and a rattle and a long dazzling
+flash of lighted carriage windows, a smell of smoke, and blast of
+hot air, the train hurtled by, clanging and jangling and echoing in
+the vaulted roof of the tunnel.  Phyllis and Bobbie clung to each
+other.  Even Peter caught hold of Bobbie's arm, "in case she should
+be frightened," as he explained afterwards.
+
+And now, slowly and gradually, the tail-lights grew smaller and
+smaller, and so did the noise, till with one last WHIZ the train got
+itself out of the tunnel, and silence settled again on its damp
+walls and dripping roof.
+
+"OH!" said the children, all together in a whisper.
+
+Peter was lighting the candle end with a hand that trembled.
+
+"Come on," he said; but he had to clear his throat before he could
+speak in his natural voice.
+
+"Oh," said Phyllis, "if the red-jerseyed one was in the way of the
+train!"
+
+"We've got to go and see," said Peter.
+
+"Couldn't we go and send someone from the station?" said Phyllis.
+
+"Would you rather wait here for us?" asked Bobbie, severely, and of
+course that settled the question.
+
+So the three went on into the deeper darkness of the tunnel.  Peter
+led, holding his candle end high to light the way.  The grease ran
+down his fingers, and some of it right up his sleeve.  He found a
+long streak from wrist to elbow when he went to bed that night.
+
+It was not more than a hundred and fifty yards from the spot where
+they had stood while the train went by that Peter stood still,
+shouted "Hullo," and then went on much quicker than before.  When
+the others caught him up, he stopped.  And he stopped within a yard
+of what they had come into the tunnel to look for.  Phyllis saw a
+gleam of red, and shut her eyes tight.  There, by the curved, pebbly
+down line, was the red-jerseyed hound.  His back was against the
+wall, his arms hung limply by his sides, and his eyes were shut.
+
+"Was the red, blood?  Is he all killed?" asked Phyllis, screwing her
+eyelids more tightly together.
+
+"Killed?  Nonsense!" said Peter.  "There's nothing red about him
+except his jersey.  He's only fainted.  What on earth are we to do?"
+
+"Can we move him?" asked Bobbie.
+
+"I don't know; he's a big chap."
+
+"Suppose we bathe his forehead with water.  No, I know we haven't
+any, but milk's just as wet.  There's a whole bottle."
+
+"Yes," said Peter, "and they rub people's hands, I believe."
+
+"They burn feathers, I know," said Phyllis.
+
+"What's the good of saying that when we haven't any feathers?"
+
+"As it happens," said Phyllis, in a tone of exasperated triumph,
+"I've got a shuttlecock in my pocket.  So there!"
+
+And now Peter rubbed the hands of the red-jerseyed one.  Bobbie
+burned the feathers of the shuttlecock one by one under his nose,
+Phyllis splashed warmish milk on his forehead, and all three kept on
+saying as fast and as earnestly as they could:--
+
+"Oh, look up, speak to me!  For my sake, speak!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XII. What Bobbie brought home.
+
+
+"Oh, look up!  Speak to me!  For MY sake, speak!"  The children said
+the words over and over again to the unconscious hound in a red
+jersey, who sat with closed eyes and pale face against the side of
+the tunnel.
+
+"Wet his ears with milk," said Bobbie.  "I know they do it to people
+that faint--with eau-de-Cologne.  But I expect milk's just as good."
+
+So they wetted his ears, and some of the milk ran down his neck
+under the red jersey.  It was very dark in the tunnel.  The candle
+end Peter had carried, and which now burned on a flat stone, gave
+hardly any light at all.
+
+"Oh, DO look up," said Phyllis.  "For MY sake!  I believe he's
+dead."
+
+"For MY sake," repeated Bobbie.  "No, he isn't."
+
+"For ANY sake," said Peter; "come out of it."  And he shook the
+sufferer by the arm.
+
+And then the boy in the red jersey sighed, and opened his eyes, and
+shut them again and said in a very small voice, "Chuck it."
+
+"Oh, he's NOT dead," said Phyllis.  "I KNEW he wasn't," and she
+began to cry.
+
+"What's up?  I'm all right," said the boy.
+
+"Drink this," said Peter, firmly, thrusting the nose of the milk
+bottle into the boy's mouth.  The boy struggled, and some of the
+milk was upset before he could get his mouth free to say:--
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's milk," said Peter.  "Fear not, you are in the hands of
+friends.  Phil, you stop bleating this minute."
+
+"Do drink it," said Bobbie, gently; "it'll do you good."
+
+So he drank.  And the three stood by without speaking to him.
+
+"Let him be a minute," Peter whispered; "he'll be all right as soon
+as the milk begins to run like fire through his veins."
+
+He was.
+
+"I'm better now," he announced.  "I remember all about it."  He
+tried to move, but the movement ended in a groan.  "Bother!  I
+believe I've broken my leg," he said.
+
+"Did you tumble down?" asked Phyllis, sniffing.
+
+"Of course not--I'm not a kiddie," said the boy, indignantly; "it
+was one of those beastly wires tripped me up, and when I tried to
+get up again I couldn't stand, so I sat down.  Gee whillikins! it
+does hurt, though.  How did YOU get here?"
+
+"We saw you all go into the tunnel and then we went across the hill
+to see you all come out.  And the others did--all but you, and you
+didn't.  So we are a rescue party," said Peter, with pride.
+
+"You've got some pluck, I will say," remarked the boy.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," said Peter, with modesty.  "Do you think you
+could walk if we helped you?"
+
+"I could try," said the boy.
+
+He did try.  But he could only stand on one foot; the other dragged
+in a very nasty way.
+
+"Here, let me sit down.  I feel like dying," said the boy.  "Let go
+of me--let go, quick--"  He lay down and closed his eyes.  The
+others looked at each other by the dim light of the little candle.
+
+"What on earth!" said Peter.
+
+"Look here," said Bobbie, quickly, "you must go and get help.  Go to
+the nearest house."
+
+"Yes, that's the only thing," said Peter.  "Come on."
+
+"If you take his feet and Phil and I take his head, we could carry
+him to the manhole."
+
+They did it.  It was perhaps as well for the sufferer that he had
+fainted again.
+
+"Now," said Bobbie, "I'll stay with him.  You take the longest bit
+of candle, and, oh--be quick, for this bit won't burn long."
+
+"I don't think Mother would like me leaving you," said Peter,
+doubtfully.  "Let me stay, and you and Phil go."
+
+"No, no," said Bobbie, "you and Phil go--and lend me your knife.
+I'll try to get his boot off before he wakes up again."
+
+"I hope it's all right what we're doing," said Peter.
+
+"Of course it's right," said Bobbie, impatiently.  "What else WOULD
+you do?  Leave him here all alone because it's dark?  Nonsense.
+Hurry up, that's all."
+
+So they hurried up.
+
+Bobbie watched their dark figures and the little light of the little
+candle with an odd feeling of having come to the end of everything.
+She knew now, she thought, what nuns who were bricked up alive in
+convent walls felt like.  Suddenly she gave herself a little shake.
+
+"Don't be a silly little girl," she said.  She was always very angry
+when anyone else called her a little girl, even if the adjective
+that went first was not "silly" but "nice" or "good" or "clever."
+And it was only when she was very angry with herself that she
+allowed Roberta to use that expression to Bobbie.
+
+She fixed the little candle end on a broken brick near the red-
+jerseyed boy's feet.  Then she opened Peter's knife.  It was always
+hard to manage--a halfpenny was generally needed to get it open at
+all.  This time Bobbie somehow got it open with her thumbnail.  She
+broke the nail, and it hurt horribly.  Then she cut the boy's
+bootlace, and got the boot off.  She tried to pull off his stocking,
+but his leg was dreadfully swollen, and it did not seem to be the
+proper shape.  So she cut the stocking down, very slowly and
+carefully.  It was a brown, knitted stocking, and she wondered who
+had knitted it, and whether it was the boy's mother, and whether she
+was feeling anxious about him, and how she would feel when he was
+brought home with his leg broken.  When Bobbie had got the stocking
+off and saw the poor leg, she felt as though the tunnel was growing
+darker, and the ground felt unsteady, and nothing seemed quite real.
+
+"SILLY little girl!" said Roberta to Bobbie, and felt better.
+
+"The poor leg," she told herself; "it ought to have a cushion--ah!"
+
+She remembered the day when she and Phyllis had torn up their red
+flannel petticoats to make danger signals to stop the train and
+prevent an accident.  Her flannel petticoat to-day was white, but it
+would be quite as soft as a red one.  She took it off.
+
+"Oh, what useful things flannel petticoats are!" she said; "the man
+who invented them ought to have a statue directed to him."  And she
+said it aloud, because it seemed that any voice, even her own, would
+be a comfort in that darkness.
+
+"WHAT ought to be directed?  Who to?" asked the boy, suddenly and
+very feebly.
+
+"Oh," said Bobbie, "now you're better!  Hold your teeth and don't
+let it hurt too much.  Now!"
+
+She had folded the petticoat, and lifting his leg laid it on the
+cushion of folded flannel.
+
+"Don't faint again, PLEASE don't," said Bobbie, as he groaned.  She
+hastily wetted her handkerchief with milk and spread it over the
+poor leg.
+
+"Oh, that hurts," cried the boy, shrinking.  "Oh--no, it doesn't--
+it's nice, really."
+
+"What's your name?" said Bobbie.
+
+"Jim."
+
+"Mine's Bobbie."
+
+"But you're a girl, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, my long name's Roberta."
+
+"I say--Bobbie."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Wasn't there some more of you just now?"
+
+"Yes, Peter and Phil--that's my brother and sister.  They've gone to
+get someone to carry you out."
+
+"What rum names.  All boys'."
+
+"Yes--I wish I was a boy, don't you?"
+
+"I think you're all right as you are."
+
+"I didn't mean that--I meant don't you wish YOU were a boy, but of
+course you are without wishing."
+
+"You're just as brave as a boy.  Why didn't you go with the others?"
+
+"Somebody had to stay with you," said Bobbie.
+
+"Tell you what, Bobbie," said Jim, "you're a brick.  Shake."  He
+reached out a red-jerseyed arm and Bobbie squeezed his hand.
+
+"I won't shake it," she explained, "because it would shake YOU, and
+that would shake your poor leg, and that would hurt.  Have you got a
+hanky?"
+
+"I don't expect I have."  He felt in his pocket.  "Yes, I have.
+What for?"
+
+She took it and wetted it with milk and put it on his forehead.
+
+"That's jolly," he said; "what is it?"
+
+"Milk," said Bobbie.  "We haven't any water--"
+
+"You're a jolly good little nurse," said Jim.
+
+"I do it for Mother sometimes," said Bobbie--"not milk, of course,
+but scent, or vinegar and water.  I say, I must put the candle out
+now, because there mayn't be enough of the other one to get you out
+by."
+
+"By George," said he, "you think of everything."
+
+Bobbie blew.  Out went the candle.  You have no idea how black-
+velvety the darkness was.
+
+"I say, Bobbie," said a voice through the blackness, "aren't you
+afraid of the dark?"
+
+"Not--not very, that is--"
+
+"Let's hold hands," said the boy, and it was really rather good of
+him, because he was like most boys of his age and hated all material
+tokens of affection, such as kissing and holding of hands.  He
+called all such things "pawings," and detested them.
+
+The darkness was more bearable to Bobbie now that her hand was held
+in the large rough hand of the red-jerseyed sufferer; and he,
+holding her little smooth hot paw, was surprised to find that he did
+not mind it so much as he expected.  She tried to talk, to amuse
+him, and "take his mind off" his sufferings, but it is very
+difficult to go on talking in the dark, and presently they found
+themselves in a silence, only broken now and then by a--
+
+"You all right, Bobbie?"
+
+or an--
+
+"I'm afraid it's hurting you most awfully, Jim.  I AM so sorry."
+
+And it was very cold.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+Peter and Phyllis tramped down the long way of the tunnel towards
+daylight, the candle-grease dripping over Peter's fingers.  There
+were no accidents unless you count Phyllis's catching her frock on a
+wire, and tearing a long, jagged slit in it, and tripping over her
+bootlace when it came undone, or going down on her hands and knees,
+all four of which were grazed.
+
+"There's no end to this tunnel," said Phyllis--and indeed it did
+seem very very long.
+
+"Stick to it," said Peter; "everything has an end, and you get to it
+if you only keep all on."
+
+Which is quite true, if you come to think of it, and a useful thing
+to remember in seasons of trouble--such as measles, arithmetic,
+impositions, and those times when you are in disgrace, and feel as
+though no one would ever love you again, and you could never--never
+again--love anybody.
+
+"Hurray," said Peter, suddenly, "there's the end of the tunnel--
+looks just like a pin-hole in a bit of black paper, doesn't it?"
+
+The pin-hole got larger--blue lights lay along the sides of the
+tunnel.  The children could see the gravel way that lay in front of
+them; the air grew warmer and sweeter.  Another twenty steps and
+they were out in the good glad sunshine with the green trees on both
+sides.
+
+Phyllis drew a long breath.
+
+"I'll never go into a tunnel again as long as ever I live," said
+she, "not if there are twenty hundred thousand millions hounds
+inside with red jerseys and their legs broken."
+
+"Don't be a silly cuckoo," said Peter, as usual.  "You'd HAVE to."
+
+"I think it was very brave and good of me," said Phyllis.
+
+"Not it," said Peter; "you didn't go because you were brave, but
+because Bobbie and I aren't skunks.  Now where's the nearest house,
+I wonder?  You can't see anything here for the trees."
+
+"There's a roof over there," said Phyllis, pointing down the line.
+
+"That's the signal-box," said Peter, "and you know you're not
+allowed to speak to signalmen on duty.  It's wrong."
+
+"I'm not near so afraid of doing wrong as I was of going into that
+tunnel," said Phyllis.  "Come on," and she started to run along the
+line.  So Peter ran, too.
+
+It was very hot in the sunshine, and both children were hot and
+breathless by the time they stopped, and bending their heads back to
+look up at the open windows of the signal-box, shouted "Hi!" as loud
+as their breathless state allowed.  But no one answered.  The
+signal-box stood quiet as an empty nursery, and the handrail of its
+steps was hot to the hands of the children as they climbed softly
+up.  They peeped in at the open door.  The signalman was sitting on
+a chair tilted back against the wall.  His head leaned sideways, and
+his mouth was open.  He was fast asleep.
+
+"My hat!" cried Peter; "wake up!"  And he cried it in a terrible
+voice, for he knew that if a signalman sleeps on duty, he risks
+losing his situation, let alone all the other dreadful risks to
+trains which expect him to tell them when it is safe for them to go
+their ways.
+
+The signalman never moved.  Then Peter sprang to him and shook him.
+And slowly, yawning and stretching, the man awoke.  But the moment
+he WAS awake he leapt to his feet, put his hands to his head "like a
+mad maniac," as Phyllis said afterwards, and shouted:--
+
+"Oh, my heavens--what's o'clock?"
+
+"Twelve thirteen," said Peter, and indeed it was by the white-faced,
+round-faced clock on the wall of the signal-box.
+
+The man looked at the clock, sprang to the levers, and wrenched them
+this way and that.  An electric bell tingled--the wires and cranks
+creaked, and the man threw himself into a chair.  He was very pale,
+and the sweat stood on his forehead "like large dewdrops on a white
+cabbage," as Phyllis remarked later.  He was trembling, too; the
+children could see his big hairy hands shake from side to side,
+"with quite extra-sized trembles," to use the subsequent words of
+Peter.  He drew long breaths.  Then suddenly he cried, "Thank God,
+thank God you come in when you did--oh, thank God!" and his
+shoulders began to heave and his face grew red again, and he hid it
+in those large hairy hands of his.
+
+"Oh, don't cry--don't," said Phyllis, "it's all right now," and she
+patted him on one big, broad shoulder, while Peter conscientiously
+thumped the other.
+
+But the signalman seemed quite broken down, and the children had to
+pat him and thump him for quite a long time before he found his
+handkerchief--a red one with mauve and white horseshoes on it--and
+mopped his face and spoke.  During this patting and thumping
+interval a train thundered by.
+
+"I'm downright shamed, that I am," were the words of the big
+signalman when he had stopped crying; "snivelling like a kid."  Then
+suddenly he seemed to get cross.  "And what was you doing up here,
+anyway?" he said; "you know it ain't allowed."
+
+"Yes," said Phyllis, "we knew it was wrong--but I wasn't afraid of
+doing wrong, and so it turned out right.  You aren't sorry we came."
+
+"Lor' love you--if you hadn't 'a' come--" he stopped and then went
+on.  "It's a disgrace, so it is, sleeping on duty.  If it was to
+come to be known--even as it is, when no harm's come of it."
+
+"It won't come to be known," said Peter; "we aren't sneaks.  All the
+same, you oughtn't to sleep on duty--it's dangerous."
+
+"Tell me something I don't know," said the man, "but I can't help
+it.  I know'd well enough just how it 'ud be.  But I couldn't get
+off.  They couldn't get no one to take on my duty.  I tell you I
+ain't had ten minutes' sleep this last five days.  My little chap's
+ill--pewmonia, the Doctor says--and there's no one but me and 'is
+little sister to do for him.  That's where it is.  The gell must
+'ave her sleep.  Dangerous?  Yes, I believe you.  Now go and split
+on me if you like."
+
+"Of course we won't," said Peter, indignantly, but Phyllis ignored
+the whole of the signalman's speech, except the first six words.
+
+"You asked us," she said, "to tell you something you don't know.
+Well, I will.  There's a boy in the tunnel over there with a red
+jersey and his leg broken."
+
+"What did he want to go into the blooming tunnel for, then?" said
+the man.
+
+"Don't you be so cross," said Phyllis, kindly.  "WE haven't done
+anything wrong except coming and waking you up, and that was right,
+as it happens."
+
+Then Peter told how the boy came to be in the tunnel.
+
+"Well," said the man, "I don't see as I can do anything.  I can't
+leave the box."
+
+"You might tell us where to go after someone who isn't in a box,
+though," said Phyllis.
+
+"There's Brigden's farm over yonder--where you see the smoke a-
+coming up through the trees," said the man, more and more grumpy, as
+Phyllis noticed.
+
+"Well, good-bye, then," said Peter.
+
+But the man said, "Wait a minute."  He put his hand in his pocket
+and brought out some money--a lot of pennies and one or two
+shillings and sixpences and half-a-crown.  He picked out two
+shillings and held them out.
+
+"Here," he said.  "I'll give you this to hold your tongues about
+what's taken place to-day."
+
+There was a short, unpleasant pause.  Then:--
+
+"You ARE a nasty man, though, aren't you?" said Phyllis.
+
+Peter took a step forward and knocked the man's hand up, so that the
+shillings leapt out of it and rolled on the floor.
+
+"If anything COULD make me sneak, THAT would!" he said.  "Come,
+Phil," and marched out of the signal-box with flaming cheeks.
+
+Phyllis hesitated.  Then she took the hand, still held out stupidly,
+that the shillings had been in.
+
+"I forgive you," she said, "even if Peter doesn't.  You're not in
+your proper senses, or you'd never have done that.  I know want of
+sleep sends people mad.  Mother told me.  I hope your little boy
+will soon be better, and--"
+
+"Come on, Phil," cried Peter, eagerly.
+
+"I give you my sacred honour-word we'll never tell anyone.  Kiss and
+be friends," said Phyllis, feeling how noble it was of her to try to
+make up a quarrel in which she was not to blame.
+
+The signalman stooped and kissed her.
+
+"I do believe I'm a bit off my head, Sissy," he said.  "Now run
+along home to Mother.  I didn't mean to put you about--there."
+
+So Phil left the hot signal-box and followed Peter across the fields
+to the farm.
+
+When the farm men, led by Peter and Phyllis and carrying a hurdle
+covered with horse-cloths, reached the manhole in the tunnel, Bobbie
+was fast asleep and so was Jim.  Worn out with the pain, the Doctor
+said afterwards.
+
+"Where does he live?" the bailiff from the farm asked, when Jim had
+been lifted on to the hurdle.
+
+"In Northumberland," answered Bobbie.
+
+"I'm at school at Maidbridge," said Jim.  "I suppose I've got to get
+back there, somehow."
+
+"Seems to me the Doctor ought to have a look in first," said the
+bailiff.
+
+"Oh, bring him up to our house," said Bobbie.  "It's only a little
+way by the road.  I'm sure Mother would say we ought to."
+
+"Will your Ma like you bringing home strangers with broken legs?"
+
+"She took the poor Russian home herself," said Bobbie.  "I know
+she'd say we ought."
+
+"All right," said the bailiff, "you ought to know what your Ma 'ud
+like.  I wouldn't take it upon me to fetch him up to our place
+without I asked the Missus first, and they call me the Master, too."
+
+"Are you sure your Mother won't mind?" whispered Jim.
+
+"Certain," said Bobbie.
+
+"Then we're to take him up to Three Chimneys?" said the bailiff.
+
+"Of course," said Peter.
+
+"Then my lad shall nip up to Doctor's on his bike, and tell him to
+come down there.  Now, lads, lift him quiet and steady.  One, two,
+three!"
+
+          *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+Thus it happened that Mother, writing away for dear life at a story
+about a Duchess, a designing villain, a secret passage, and a
+missing will, dropped her pen as her work-room door burst open, and
+turned to see Bobbie hatless and red with running.
+
+"Oh, Mother," she cried, "do come down.  We found a hound in a red
+jersey in the tunnel, and he's broken his leg and they're bringing
+him home."
+
+"They ought to take him to the vet," said Mother, with a worried
+frown; "I really CAN'T have a lame dog here."
+
+"He's not a dog, really--he's a boy," said Bobbie, between laughing
+and choking.
+
+"Then he ought to be taken home to his mother."
+
+"His mother's dead," said Bobbie, "and his father's in
+Northumberland.  Oh, Mother, you will be nice to him?  I told him I
+was sure you'd want us to bring him home.  You always want to help
+everybody."
+
+Mother smiled, but she sighed, too.  It is nice that your children
+should believe you willing to open house and heart to any and every
+one who needs help.  But it is rather embarrassing sometimes, too,
+when they act on their belief.
+
+"Oh, well," said Mother, "we must make the best of it."
+
+When Jim was carried in, dreadfully white and with set lips whose
+red had faded to a horrid bluey violet colour, Mother said:--
+
+"I am glad you brought him here.  Now, Jim, let's get you
+comfortable in bed before the Doctor comes!"
+
+And Jim, looking at her kind eyes, felt a little, warm, comforting
+flush of new courage.
+
+"It'll hurt rather, won't it?" he said.  "I don't mean to be a
+coward.  You won't think I'm a coward if I faint again, will you?  I
+really and truly don't do it on purpose.  And I do hate to give you
+all this trouble."
+
+"Don't you worry," said Mother; "it's you that have the trouble, you
+poor dear--not us."
+
+And she kissed him just as if he had been Peter.  "We love to have
+you here--don't we, Bobbie?"
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie--and she saw by her Mother's face how right she
+had been to bring home the wounded hound in the red jersey.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII. The hound's grandfather.
+
+
+Mother did not get back to her writing all that day, for the red-
+jerseyed hound whom the children had brought to Three Chimneys had
+to be put to bed.  And then the Doctor came, and hurt him most
+horribly.  Mother was with him all through it, and that made it a
+little better than it would have been, but "bad was the best," as
+Mrs. Viney said.
+
+The children sat in the parlour downstairs and heard the sound of
+the Doctor's boots going backwards and forwards over the bedroom
+floor.  And once or twice there was a groan.
+
+"It's horrible," said Bobbie.  "Oh, I wish Dr. Forrest would make
+haste.  Oh, poor Jim!"
+
+"It IS horrible," said Peter, "but it's very exciting.  I wish
+Doctors weren't so stuck-up about who they'll have in the room when
+they're doing things.  I should most awfully like to see a leg set.
+I believe the bones crunch like anything."
+
+"Don't!" said the two girls at once.
+
+"Rubbish!" said Peter.  "How are you going to be Red Cross Nurses,
+like you were talking of coming home, if you can't even stand
+hearing me say about bones crunching?  You'd have to HEAR them
+crunch on the field of battle--and be steeped in gore up to the
+elbows as likely as not, and--"
+
+"Stop it!" cried Bobbie, with a white face; "you don't know how
+funny you're making me feel."
+
+"Me, too," said Phyllis, whose face was pink.
+
+"Cowards!" said Peter.
+
+"I'm not," said Bobbie.  "I helped Mother with your rake-wounded
+foot, and so did Phil--you know we did."
+
+"Well, then!" said Peter.  "Now look here.  It would be a jolly good
+thing for you if I were to talk to you every day for half an hour
+about broken bones and people's insides, so as to get you used to
+it."
+
+A chair was moved above.
+
+"Listen," said Peter, "that's the bone crunching."
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't," said Phyllis.  "Bobbie doesn't like it."
+
+"I'll tell you what they do," said Peter.  I can't think what made
+him so horrid.  Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and
+kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a
+change.  This is called reaction.  One notices it now and then in
+oneself.  Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time
+than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being
+good at all.  "I'll tell you what they do," said Peter; "they strap
+the broken man down so that he can't resist or interfere with their
+doctorish designs, and then someone holds his head, and someone
+holds his leg--the broken one, and pulls it till the bones fit in--
+with a crunch, mind you!  Then they strap it up and--let's play at
+bone-setting!"
+
+"Oh, no!" said Phyllis.
+
+But Bobbie said suddenly:  "All right--LET'S!  I'll be the doctor,
+and Phil can be the nurse.  You can be the broken boner; we can get
+at your legs more easily, because you don't wear petticoats."
+
+"I'll get the splints and bandages," said Peter; "you get the couch
+of suffering ready."
+
+The ropes that had tied up the boxes that had come from home were
+all in a wooden packing-case in the cellar.  When Peter brought in a
+trailing tangle of them, and two boards for splints, Phyllis was
+excitedly giggling.
+
+"Now, then," he said, and lay down on the settle, groaning most
+grievously.
+
+"Not so loud!" said Bobbie, beginning to wind the rope round him and
+the settle.  "You pull, Phil."
+
+"Not so tight," moaned Peter.  "You'll break my other leg."
+
+Bobbie worked on in silence, winding more and more rope round him.
+
+"That's enough," said Peter.  "I can't move at all.  Oh, my poor
+leg!"  He groaned again.
+
+"SURE you can't move?" asked Bobbie, in a rather strange tone.
+
+"Quite sure," replied Peter.  "Shall we play it's bleeding freely or
+not?" he asked cheerfully.
+
+"YOU can play what you like," said Bobbie, sternly, folding her arms
+and looking down at him where he lay all wound round and round with
+cord.  "Phil and I are going away.  And we shan't untie you till you
+promise never, never to talk to us about blood and wounds unless we
+say you may.  Come, Phil!"
+
+"You beast!" said Peter, writhing.  "I'll never promise, never.
+I'll yell, and Mother will come."
+
+"Do," said Bobbie, "and tell her why we tied you up!  Come on, Phil.
+No, I'm not a beast, Peter.  But you wouldn't stop when we asked you
+and--"
+
+"Yah," said Peter, "it wasn't even your own idea.  You got it out of
+Stalky!"
+
+Bobbie and Phil, retiring in silent dignity, were met at the door by
+the Doctor.  He came in rubbing his hands and looking pleased with
+himself.
+
+"Well," he said, "THAT job's done.  It's a nice clean fracture, and
+it'll go on all right, I've no doubt.  Plucky young chap, too--
+hullo! what's all this?"
+
+His eye had fallen on Peter who lay mousy-still in his bonds on the
+settle.
+
+"Playing at prisoners, eh?" he said; but his eyebrows had gone up a
+little.  Somehow he had not thought that Bobbie would be playing
+while in the room above someone was having a broken bone set.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Bobbie, "not at PRISONERS.  We were playing at
+setting bones.  Peter's the broken boner, and I was the doctor."
+
+The Doctor frowned.
+
+"Then I must say," he said, and he said it rather sternly, "that's
+it's a very heartless game.  Haven't you enough imagination even to
+faintly picture what's been going on upstairs?  That poor chap, with
+the drops of sweat on his forehead, and biting his lips so as not to
+cry out, and every touch on his leg agony and--"
+
+"YOU ought to be tied up," said Phyllis; "you're as bad as--"
+
+"Hush," said Bobbie; "I'm sorry, but we weren't heartless, really."
+
+"I was, I suppose," said Peter, crossly.  "All right, Bobbie, don't
+you go on being noble and screening me, because I jolly well won't
+have it.  It was only that I kept on talking about blood and wounds.
+I wanted to train them for Red Cross Nurses.  And I wouldn't stop
+when they asked me."
+
+"Well?" said Dr. Forrest, sitting down.
+
+"Well--then I said, 'Let's play at setting bones.'  It was all rot.
+I knew Bobbie wouldn't.  I only said it to tease her.  And then when
+she said 'yes,' of course I had to go through with it.  And they
+tied me up.  They got it out of Stalky.  And I think it's a beastly
+shame."
+
+He managed to writhe over and hide his face against the wooden back
+of the settle.
+
+"I didn't think that anyone would know but us," said Bobbie,
+indignantly answering Peter's unspoken reproach.  "I never thought
+of your coming in.  And hearing about blood and wounds does really
+make me feel most awfully funny.  It was only a joke our tying him
+up.  Let me untie you, Pete."
+
+"I don't care if you never untie me," said Peter; "and if that's
+your idea of a joke--"
+
+"If I were you," said the Doctor, though really he did not quite
+know what to say, "I should be untied before your Mother comes down.
+You don't want to worry her just now, do you?"
+
+"I don't promise anything about not saying about wounds, mind," said
+Peter, in very surly tones, as Bobbie and Phyllis began to untie the
+knots.
+
+"I'm very sorry, Pete," Bobbie whispered, leaning close to him as
+she fumbled with the big knot under the settle; "but if you only
+knew how sick you made me feel."
+
+"You've made ME feel pretty sick, I can tell you," Peter rejoined.
+Then he shook off the loose cords, and stood up.
+
+"I looked in," said Dr. Forrest, "to see if one of you would come
+along to the surgery.  There are some things that your Mother will
+want at once, and I've given my man a day off to go and see the
+circus; will you come, Peter?"
+
+Peter went without a word or a look to his sisters.
+
+The two walked in silence up to the gate that led from the Three
+Chimneys field to the road.  Then Peter said:--
+
+"Let me carry your bag.  I say, it is heavy--what's in it?"
+
+"Oh, knives and lancets and different instruments for hurting
+people.  And the ether bottle.  I had to give him ether, you know--
+the agony was so intense."
+
+Peter was silent.
+
+"Tell me all about how you found that chap," said Dr. Forrest.
+
+Peter told.  And then Dr. Forrest told him stories of brave rescues;
+he was a most interesting man to talk to, as Peter had often
+remarked.
+
+Then in the surgery Peter had a better chance than he had ever had
+of examining the Doctor's balance, and his microscope, and his
+scales and measuring glasses.  When all the things were ready that
+Peter was to take back, the Doctor said suddenly:--
+
+"You'll excuse my shoving my oar in, won't you?  But I should like
+to say something to you."
+
+"Now for a rowing," thought Peter, who had been wondering how it was
+that he had escaped one.
+
+"Something scientific," added the Doctor.
+
+"Yes," said Peter, fiddling with the fossil ammonite that the Doctor
+used for a paper-weight.
+
+"Well then, you see.  Boys and girls are only little men and women.
+And WE are much harder and hardier than they are--"  (Peter liked
+the "we."  Perhaps the Doctor had known he would.)--"and much
+stronger, and things that hurt THEM don't hurt US.  You know you
+mustn't hit a girl--"
+
+"I should think not, indeed," muttered Peter, indignantly.
+
+"Not even if she's your own sister.  That's because girls are so
+much softer and weaker than we are; they have to be, you know," he
+added, "because if they weren't, it wouldn't be nice for the babies.
+And that's why all the animals are so good to the mother animals.
+They never fight them, you know."
+
+"I know," said Peter, interested; "two buck rabbits will fight all
+day if you let them, but they won't hurt a doe."
+
+"No; and quite wild beasts--lions and elephants--they're immensely
+gentle with the female beasts.  And we've got to be, too."
+
+"I see," said Peter.
+
+"And their hearts are soft, too," the Doctor went on, "and things
+that we shouldn't think anything of hurt them dreadfully.  So that a
+man has to be very careful, not only of his fists, but of his words.
+They're awfully brave, you know," he went on.  "Think of Bobbie
+waiting alone in the tunnel with that poor chap.  It's an odd thing-
+-the softer and more easily hurt a woman is the better she can screw
+herself up to do what HAS to be done.  I've seen some brave women--
+your Mother's one," he ended abruptly.
+
+"Yes," said Peter.
+
+"Well, that's all.  Excuse my mentioning it.  But nobody knows
+everything without being told.  And you see what I mean, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Peter.  "I'm sorry.  There!"
+
+"Of course you are!  People always are--directly they understand.
+Everyone ought to be taught these scientific facts.  So long!"
+
+They shook hands heartily.  When Peter came home, his sisters looked
+at him doubtfully.
+
+"It's Pax," said Peter, dumping down the basket on the table.  "Dr.
+Forrest has been talking scientific to me.  No, it's no use my
+telling you what he said; you wouldn't understand.  But it all comes
+to you girls being poor, soft, weak, frightened things like rabbits,
+so us men have just got to put up with them.  He said you were
+female beasts.  Shall I take this up to Mother, or will you?"
+
+"I know what BOYS are," said Phyllis, with flaming cheeks; "they're
+just the nastiest, rudest--"
+
+"They're very brave," said Bobbie, "sometimes."
+
+"Ah, you mean the chap upstairs?  I see.  Go ahead, Phil--I shall
+put up with you whatever you say because you're a poor, weak,
+frightened, soft--"
+
+"Not if I pull your hair you won't," said Phyllis, springing at him.
+
+"He said 'Pax,'" said Bobbie, pulling her away.  "Don't you see,"
+she whispered as Peter picked up the basket and stalked out with it,
+"he's sorry, really, only he won't say so?  Let's say we're sorry."
+
+"It's so goody goody," said Phyllis, doubtfully; "he said we were
+female beasts, and soft and frightened--"
+
+"Then let's show him we're not frightened of him thinking us goody
+goody," said Bobbie; "and we're not any more beasts than he is."
+
+And when Peter came back, still with his chin in the air, Bobbie
+said:--
+
+"We're sorry we tied you up, Pete."
+
+"I thought you would be," said Peter, very stiff and superior.
+
+This was hard to bear.  But--
+
+"Well, so we are," said Bobbie.  "Now let honour be satisfied on
+both sides."
+
+"I did call it Pax," said Peter, in an injured tone.
+
+"Then let it BE Pax," said Bobbie.  "Come on, Phil, let's get the
+tea.  Pete, you might lay the cloth."
+
+"I say," said Phyllis, when peace was really restored, which was not
+till they were washing up the cups after tea, "Dr. Forrest didn't
+REALLY say we were female beasts, did he?"
+
+"Yes," said Peter, firmly, "but I think he meant we men were wild
+beasts, too."
+
+"How funny of him!" said Phyllis, breaking a cup.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+"May I come in, Mother?"  Peter was at the door of Mother's writing
+room, where Mother sat at her table with two candles in front of
+her.  Their flames looked orange and violet against the clear grey
+blue of the sky where already a few stars were twinkling.
+
+"Yes, dear," said Mother, absently, "anything wrong?"  She wrote a
+few more words and then laid down her pen and began to fold up what
+she had written.  "I was just writing to Jim's grandfather.  He
+lives near here, you know."
+
+"Yes, you said so at tea.  That's what I want to say.  Must you
+write to him, Mother?  Couldn't we keep Jim, and not say anything to
+his people till he's well?  It would be such a surprise for them."
+
+"Well, yes," said Mother, laughing, "I think it would."
+
+"You see," Peter went on, "of course the girls are all right and all
+that--I'm not saying anything against THEM.  But I should like it if
+I had another chap to talk to sometimes."
+
+"Yes," said Mother, "I know it's dull for you, dear.  But I can't
+help it.  Next year perhaps I can send you to school--you'd like
+that, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I do miss the other chaps, rather," Peter confessed; "but if Jim
+could stay after his leg was well, we could have awful larks."
+
+"I've no doubt of it," said Mother.  "Well--perhaps he could, but
+you know, dear, we're not rich.  I can't afford to get him
+everything he'll want.  And he must have a nurse."
+
+"Can't you nurse him, Mother?  You do nurse people so beautifully."
+
+"That's a pretty compliment, Pete--but I can't do nursing and my
+writing as well.  That's the worst of it."
+
+"Then you MUST send the letter to his grandfather?"
+
+"Of course--and to his schoolmaster, too.  We telegraphed to them
+both, but I must write as well.  They'll be most dreadfully
+anxious."
+
+"I say, Mother, why can't his grandfather pay for a nurse?" Peter
+suggested.  "That would be ripping.  I expect the old boy's rolling
+in money.  Grandfathers in books always are."
+
+"Well, this one isn't in a book," said Mother, "so we mustn't expect
+him to roll much."
+
+"I say," said Peter, musingly, "wouldn't it be jolly if we all WERE
+in a book, and you were writing it?  Then you could make all sorts
+of jolly things happen, and make Jim's legs get well at once and be
+all right to-morrow, and Father come home soon and--"
+
+"Do you miss your Father very much?" Mother asked, rather coldly,
+Peter thought.
+
+"Awfully," said Peter, briefly.
+
+Mother was enveloping and addressing the second letter.
+
+"You see," Peter went on slowly, "you see, it's not only him BEING
+Father, but now he's away there's no other man in the house but me--
+that's why I want Jim to stay so frightfully much.  Wouldn't you
+like to be writing that book with us all in it, Mother, and make
+Daddy come home soon?"
+
+Peter's Mother put her arm round him suddenly, and hugged him in
+silence for a minute.  Then she said:--
+
+"Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that
+God's writing?  If I were writing the book, I might make mistakes.
+But God knows how to make the story end just right--in the way
+that's best for us."
+
+"Do you really believe that, Mother?" Peter asked quietly.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I do believe it--almost always--except when I'm so
+sad that I can't believe anything.  But even when I can't believe
+it, I know it's true--and I try to believe.  You don't know how I
+try, Peter.  Now take the letters to the post, and don't let's be
+sad any more.  Courage, courage!  That's the finest of all the
+virtues!  I dare say Jim will be here for two or three weeks yet."
+
+For what was left of the evening Peter was so angelic that Bobbie
+feared he was going to be ill.  She was quite relieved in the
+morning to find him plaiting Phyllis's hair on to the back of her
+chair in quite his old manner.
+
+It was soon after breakfast that a knock came at the door.  The
+children were hard at work cleaning the brass candlesticks in honour
+of Jim's visit.
+
+"That'll be the Doctor," said Mother; "I'll go.  Shut the kitchen
+door--you're not fit to be seen."
+
+But it wasn't the Doctor.  They knew that by the voice and by the
+sound of the boots that went upstairs.  They did not recognise the
+sound of the boots, but everyone was certain that they had heard the
+voice before.
+
+There was a longish interval.  The boots and the voice did not come
+down again.
+
+"Who can it possibly be?" they kept on asking themselves and each
+other.
+
+"Perhaps," said Peter at last, "Dr. Forrest has been attacked by
+highwaymen and left for dead, and this is the man he's telegraphed
+for to take his place.  Mrs. Viney said he had a local tenant to do
+his work when he went for a holiday, didn't you, Mrs. Viney?"
+
+"I did so, my dear," said Mrs. Viney from the back kitchen.
+
+"He's fallen down in a fit, more likely, said Phyllis, "all human
+aid despaired of.  And this is his man come to break the news to
+Mother."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Peter, briskly; "Mother wouldn't have taken the man
+up into Jim's bedroom.  Why should she?  Listen--the door's opening.
+Now they'll come down.  I'll open the door a crack."
+
+He did.
+
+"It's not listening," he replied indignantly to Bobbie's scandalised
+remarks; "nobody in their senses would talk secrets on the stairs.
+And Mother can't have secrets to talk with Dr. Forrest's stable-man-
+-and you said it was him."
+
+"Bobbie," called Mother's voice.
+
+They opened the kitchen door, and Mother leaned over the stair
+railing.
+
+"Jim's grandfather has come," she said; "wash your hands and faces
+and then you can see him.  He wants to see you!"  The bedroom door
+shut again.
+
+"There now!" said Peter; "fancy us not even thinking of that!  Let's
+have some hot water, Mrs. Viney.  I'm as black as your hat."
+
+The three were indeed dirty, for the stuff you clean brass
+candlesticks with is very far from cleaning to the cleaner.
+
+They were still busy with soap and flannel when they heard the boots
+and the voice come down the stairs and go into the dining-room.  And
+when they were clean, though still damp--because it takes such a
+long time to dry your hands properly, and they were very impatient
+to see the grandfather--they filed into the dining-room.
+
+Mother was sitting in the window-seat, and in the leather-covered
+armchair that Father always used to sit in at the other house sat--
+
+     THEIR OWN OLD GENTLEMAN!
+
+"Well, I never did," said Peter, even before he said, "How do you
+do?"  He was, as he explained afterwards, too surprised even to
+remember that there was such a thing as politeness--much less to
+practise it.
+
+"It's our own old gentleman!" said Phyllis.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" said Bobbie.  And then they remembered themselves
+and their manners and said, "How do you do?" very nicely.
+
+"This is Jim's grandfather, Mr. --" said Mother, naming the old
+gentleman's name.
+
+"How splendid!" said Peter; "that's just exactly like a book, isn't
+it, Mother?"
+
+"It is, rather," said Mother, smiling; "things do happen in real
+life that are rather like books, sometimes."
+
+"I am so awfully glad it IS you," said Phyllis; "when you think of
+the tons of old gentlemen there are in the world--it might have been
+almost anyone."
+
+"I say, though," said Peter, "you're not going to take Jim away,
+though, are you?"
+
+"Not at present," said the old gentleman.  "Your Mother has most
+kindly consented to let him stay here.  I thought of sending a
+nurse, but your Mother is good enough to say that she will nurse him
+herself."
+
+"But what about her writing?" said Peter, before anyone could stop
+him.  "There won't be anything for him to eat if Mother doesn't
+write."
+
+"That's all right," said Mother, hastily.
+
+The old gentleman looked very kindly at Mother.
+
+"I see," he said, "you trust your children, and confide in them."
+
+"Of course," said Mother.
+
+"Then I may tell them of our little arrangement," he said.  "Your
+Mother, my dears, has consented to give up writing for a little
+while and to become a Matron of my Hospital."
+
+"Oh!" said Phyllis, blankly; "and shall we have to go away from
+Three Chimneys and the Railway and everything?"
+
+"No, no, darling," said Mother, hurriedly.
+
+"The Hospital is called Three Chimneys Hospital," said the old
+gentleman, "and my unlucky Jim's the only patient, and I hope he'll
+continue to be so.  Your Mother will be Matron, and there'll be a
+hospital staff of a housemaid and a cook--till Jim's well."
+
+"And then will Mother go on writing again?" asked Peter.
+
+"We shall see," said the old gentleman, with a slight, swift glance
+at Bobbie; "perhaps something nice may happen and she won't have
+to."
+
+"I love my writing," said Mother, very quickly.
+
+"I know," said the old gentleman; "don't be afraid that I'm going to
+try to interfere.  But one never knows.  Very wonderful and
+beautiful things do happen, don't they?  And we live most of our
+lives in the hope of them.  I may come again to see the boy?"
+
+"Surely," said Mother, "and I don't know how to thank you for making
+it possible for me to nurse him.  Dear boy!"
+
+"He kept calling Mother, Mother, in the night," said Phyllis.  "I
+woke up twice and heard him."
+
+"He didn't mean me," said Mother, in a low voice to the old
+gentleman; "that's why I wanted so much to keep him."
+
+The old gentleman rose.
+
+"I'm so glad," said Peter, "that you're going to keep him, Mother."
+
+"Take care of your Mother, my dears," said the old gentleman.
+"She's a woman in a million."
+
+"Yes, isn't she?" whispered Bobbie.
+
+"God bless her," said the old gentleman, taking both Mother's hands,
+"God bless her!  Ay, and she shall be blessed.  Dear me, where's my
+hat?  Will Bobbie come with me to the gate?"
+
+At the gate he stopped and said:--
+
+"You're a good child, my dear--I got your letter.  But it wasn't
+needed.  When I read about your Father's case in the papers at the
+time, I had my doubts.  And ever since I've known who you were, I've
+been trying to find out things.  I haven't done very much yet.  But
+I have hopes, my dear--I have hopes."
+
+"Oh!" said Bobbie, choking a little.
+
+"Yes--I may say great hopes.  But keep your secret a little longer.
+Wouldn't do to upset your Mother with a false hope, would it?"
+
+"Oh, but it isn't false!" said Bobbie; "I KNOW you can do it.  I
+knew you could when I wrote.  It isn't a false hope, is it?"
+
+"No," he said, "I don't think it's a false hope, or I wouldn't have
+told you.  And I think you deserve to be told that there IS a hope."
+
+"And you don't think Father did it, do you?  Oh, say you don't think
+he did."
+
+"My dear," he said, "I'm perfectly CERTAIN he didn't."
+
+If it was a false hope, it was none the less a very radiant one that
+lay warm at Bobbie's heart, and through the days that followed
+lighted her little face as a Japanese lantern is lighted by the
+candle within.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV. The End.
+
+
+Life at the Three Chimneys was never quite the same again after the
+old gentleman came to see his grandson.  Although they now knew his
+name, the children never spoke of him by it--at any rate, when they
+were by themselves.  To them he was always the old gentleman, and I
+think he had better be the old gentleman to us, too.  It wouldn't
+make him seem any more real to you, would it, if I were to tell you
+that his name was Snooks or Jenkins (which it wasn't)?--and, after
+all, I must be allowed to keep one secret.  It's the only one; I
+have told you everything else, except what I am going to tell you in
+this chapter, which is the last.  At least, of course, I haven't
+told you EVERYTHING.  If I were to do that, the book would never
+come to an end, and that would be a pity, wouldn't it?
+
+Well, as I was saying, life at Three Chimneys was never quite the
+same again.  The cook and the housemaid were very nice (I don't mind
+telling you their names--they were Clara and Ethelwyn), but they
+told Mother they did not seem to want Mrs. Viney, and that she was
+an old muddler.  So Mrs. Viney came only two days a week to do
+washing and ironing.  Then Clara and Ethelwyn said they could do the
+work all right if they weren't interfered with, and that meant that
+the children no longer got the tea and cleared it away and washed up
+the tea-things and dusted the rooms.
+
+This would have left quite a blank in their lives, although they had
+often pretended to themselves and to each other that they hated
+housework.  But now that Mother had no writing and no housework to
+do, she had time for lessons.  And lessons the children had to do.
+However nice the person who is teaching you may be, lessons are
+lessons all the world over, and at their best are worse fun than
+peeling potatoes or lighting a fire.
+
+On the other hand, if Mother now had time for lessons, she also had
+time for play, and to make up little rhymes for the children as she
+used to do.  She had not had much time for rhymes since she came to
+Three Chimneys.
+
+There was one very odd thing about these lessons.  Whatever the
+children were doing, they always wanted to be doing something else.
+When Peter was doing his Latin, he thought it would be nice to be
+learning History like Bobbie.  Bobbie would have preferred
+Arithmetic, which was what Phyllis happened to be doing, and Phyllis
+of course thought Latin much the most interesting kind of lesson.
+And so on.
+
+So, one day, when they sat down to lessons, each of them found a
+little rhyme at its place.  I put the rhymes in to show you that
+their Mother really did understand a little how children feel about
+things, and also the kind of words they use, which is the case with
+very few grown-up people.  I suppose most grown-ups have very bad
+memories, and have forgotten how they felt when they were little.
+Of course, the verses are supposed to be spoken by the children.
+
+               PETER
+
+     I once thought Caesar easy pap--
+       How very soft I must have been!
+     When they start Caesar with a chap
+       He little know what that will mean.
+     Oh, verbs are silly stupid things.
+     I'd rather learn the dates of kings!
+
+               BOBBIE
+
+     The worst of all my lesson things
+       Is learning who succeeded who
+     In all the rows of queens and kings,
+       With dates to everything they do:
+     With dates enough to make you sick;--
+     I wish it was Arithmetic!
+
+               PHYLLIS
+
+     Such pounds and pounds of apples fill
+       My slate--what is the price you'd spend?
+     You scratch the figures out until
+       You cry upon the dividend.
+     I'd break the slate and scream for joy
+     If I did Latin like a boy!
+
+This kind of thing, of course, made lessons much jollier.  It is
+something to know that the person who is teaching you sees that it
+is not all plain sailing for you, and does not think that it is just
+your stupidness that makes you not know your lessons till you've
+learned them!
+
+Then as Jim's leg got better it was very pleasant to go up and sit
+with him and hear tales about his school life and the other boys.
+There was one boy, named Parr, of whom Jim seemed to have formed the
+lowest possible opinion, and another boy named Wigsby Minor, for
+whose views Jim had a great respect.  Also there were three brothers
+named Paley, and the youngest was called Paley Terts, and was much
+given to fighting.
+
+Peter drank in all this with deep joy, and Mother seemed to have
+listened with some interest, for one day she gave Jim a sheet of
+paper on which she had written a rhyme about Parr, bringing in Paley
+and Wigsby by name in a most wonderful way, as well as all the
+reasons Jim had for not liking Parr, and Wigsby's wise opinion on
+the matter.  Jim was immensely pleased.  He had never had a rhyme
+written expressly for him before.  He read it till he knew it by
+heart and then he sent it to Wigsby, who liked it almost as much as
+Jim did.  Perhaps you may like it, too.
+
+               THE NEW BOY
+
+     His name is Parr:  he says that he
+     Is given bread and milk for tea.
+     He says his father killed a bear.
+     He says his mother cuts his hair.
+
+     He wears goloshes when it's wet.
+     I've heard his people call him "Pet"!
+     He has no proper sense of shame;
+     He told the chaps his Christian name.
+
+     He cannot wicket-keep at all,
+     He's frightened of a cricket ball.
+     He reads indoors for hours and hours.
+     He knows the names of beastly flowers.
+
+     He says his French just like Mossoo--
+     A beastly stuck-up thing to do--
+     He won't keep _cave_, shirks his turn
+     And says he came to school to learn!
+
+     He won't play football, says it hurts;
+     He wouldn't fight with Paley Terts;
+     He couldn't whistle if he tried,
+     And when we laughed at him he cried!
+
+     Now Wigsby Minor says that Parr
+     Is only like all new boys are.
+     I know when _I_ first came to school
+     I wasn't such a jolly fool!
+
+Jim could never understand how Mother could have been clever enough
+to do it.  To the others it seemed nice, but natural.  You see they
+had always been used to having a mother who could write verses just
+like the way people talk, even to the shocking expression at the end
+of the rhyme, which was Jim's very own.
+
+Jim taught Peter to play chess and draughts and dominoes, and
+altogether it was a nice quiet time.
+
+Only Jim's leg got better and better, and a general feeling began to
+spring up among Bobbie, Peter, and Phyllis that something ought to
+be done to amuse him; not just games, but something really handsome.
+But it was extraordinarily difficult to think of anything.
+
+"It's no good," said Peter, when all of them had thought and thought
+till their heads felt quite heavy and swollen; "if we can't think of
+anything to amuse him, we just can't, and there's an end of it.
+Perhaps something will just happen of its own accord that he'll
+like."
+
+"Things DO happen by themselves sometimes, without your making
+them," said Phyllis, rather as though, usually, everything that
+happened in the world was her doing.
+
+"I wish something would happen," said Bobbie, dreamily, "something
+wonderful."
+
+And something wonderful did happen exactly four days after she had
+said this.  I wish I could say it was three days after, because in
+fairy tales it is always three days after that things happen.  But
+this is not a fairy story, and besides, it really was four and not
+three, and I am nothing if not strictly truthful.
+
+They seemed to be hardly Railway children at all in those days, and
+as the days went on each had an uneasy feeling about this which
+Phyllis expressed one day.
+
+"I wonder if the Railway misses us," she said, plaintively.  "We
+never go to see it now."
+
+"It seems ungrateful," said Bobbie; "we loved it so when we hadn't
+anyone else to play with."
+
+"Perks is always coming up to ask after Jim," said Peter, "and the
+signalman's little boy is better.  He told me so."
+
+"I didn't mean the people," explained Phyllis; "I meant the dear
+Railway itself."
+
+"The thing I don't like," said Bobbie, on this fourth day, which was
+a Tuesday, "is our having stopped waving to the 9.15 and sending our
+love to Father by it."
+
+"Let's begin again," said Phyllis.  And they did.
+
+Somehow the change of everything that was made by having servants in
+the house and Mother not doing any writing, made the time seem
+extremely long since that strange morning at the beginning of
+things, when they had got up so early and burnt the bottom out of
+the kettle and had apple pie for breakfast and first seen the
+Railway.
+
+It was September now, and the turf on the slope to the Railway was
+dry and crisp.  Little long grass spikes stood up like bits of gold
+wire, frail blue harebells trembled on their tough, slender stalks,
+Gipsy roses opened wide and flat their lilac-coloured discs, and the
+golden stars of St. John's Wort shone at the edges of the pool that
+lay halfway to the Railway.  Bobbie gathered a generous handful of
+the flowers and thought how pretty they would look lying on the
+green-and-pink blanket of silk-waste that now covered Jim's poor
+broken leg.
+
+"Hurry up," said Peter, "or we shall miss the 9.15!"
+
+"I can't hurry more than I am doing," said Phyllis.  "Oh, bother it!
+My bootlace has come undone AGAIN!"
+
+"When you're married," said Peter, "your bootlace will come undone
+going up the church aisle, and your man that you're going to get
+married to will tumble over it and smash his nose in on the
+ornamented pavement; and then you'll say you won't marry him, and
+you'll have to be an old maid."
+
+"I shan't," said Phyllis.  "I'd much rather marry a man with his
+nose smashed in than not marry anybody."
+
+"It would be horrid to marry a man with a smashed nose, all the
+same," went on Bobbie.  "He wouldn't be able to smell the flowers at
+the wedding.  Wouldn't that be awful!"
+
+"Bother the flowers at the wedding!" cried Peter.  "Look! the
+signal's down.  We must run!"
+
+They ran.  And once more they waved their handkerchiefs, without at
+all minding whether the handkerchiefs were clean or not, to the
+9.15.
+
+"Take our love to Father!" cried Bobbie.  And the others, too,
+shouted:--
+
+"Take our love to Father!"
+
+The old gentleman waved from his first-class carriage window.  Quite
+violently he waved.  And there was nothing odd in that, for he
+always had waved.  But what was really remarkable was that from
+every window handkerchiefs fluttered, newspapers signalled, hands
+waved wildly.  The train swept by with a rustle and roar, the little
+pebbles jumped and danced under it as it passed, and the children
+were left looking at each other.
+
+"Well!" said Peter.
+
+"WELL!" said Bobbie.
+
+"_WELL!_" said Phyllis.
+
+"Whatever on earth does that mean?" asked Peter, but he did not
+expect any answer.
+
+"_I_ don't know," said Bobbie.  "Perhaps the old gentleman told the
+people at his station to look out for us and wave.  He knew we
+should like it!"
+
+Now, curiously enough, this was just what had happened.  The old
+gentleman, who was very well known and respected at his particular
+station, had got there early that morning, and he had waited at the
+door where the young man stands holding the interesting machine that
+clips the tickets, and he had said something to every single
+passenger who passed through that door.  And after nodding to what
+the old gentleman had said--and the nods expressed every shade of
+surprise, interest, doubt, cheerful pleasure, and grumpy agreement--
+each passenger had gone on to the platform and read one certain part
+of his newspaper.  And when the passengers got into the train, they
+had told the other passengers who were already there what the old
+gentleman had said, and then the other passengers had also looked at
+their newspapers and seemed very astonished and, mostly, pleased.
+Then, when the train passed the fence where the three children were,
+newspapers and hands and handkerchiefs were waved madly, till all
+that side of the train was fluttery with white like the pictures of
+the King's Coronation in the biograph at Maskelyne and Cook's.  To
+the children it almost seemed as though the train itself was alive,
+and was at last responding to the love that they had given it so
+freely and so long.
+
+"It is most extraordinarily rum!" said Peter.
+
+"Most stronery!" echoed Phyllis.
+
+But Bobbie said, "Don't you think the old gentleman's waves seemed
+more significating than usual?"
+
+"No," said the others.
+
+"I do," said Bobbie.  "I thought he was trying to explain something
+to us with his newspaper."
+
+"Explain what?" asked Peter, not unnaturally.
+
+"_I_ don't know," Bobbie answered, "but I do feel most awfully
+funny.  I feel just exactly as if something was going to happen."
+
+"What is going to happen," said Peter, "is that Phyllis's stocking
+is going to come down."
+
+This was but too true.  The suspender had given way in the agitation
+of the waves to the 9.15.  Bobbie's handkerchief served as first aid
+to the injured, and they all went home.
+
+Lessons were more than usually difficult to Bobbie that day.
+Indeed, she disgraced herself so deeply over a quite simple sum
+about the division of 48 pounds of meat and 36 pounds of bread among
+144 hungry children that Mother looked at her anxiously.
+
+"Don't you feel quite well, dear?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," was Bobbie's unexpected answer.  "I don't know how I
+feel.  It isn't that I'm lazy.  Mother, will you let me off lessons
+to-day?  I feel as if I wanted to be quite alone by myself."
+
+"Yes, of course I'll let you off," said Mother; "but--"
+
+Bobbie dropped her slate.  It cracked just across the little green
+mark that is so useful for drawing patterns round, and it was never
+the same slate again.  Without waiting to pick it up she bolted.
+Mother caught her in the hall feeling blindly among the waterproofs
+and umbrellas for her garden hat.
+
+"What is it, my sweetheart?" said Mother.  "You don't feel ill, do
+you?"
+
+"I DON'T know," Bobbie answered, a little breathlessly, "but I want
+to be by myself and see if my head really IS all silly and my inside
+all squirmy-twisty."
+
+"Hadn't you better lie down?" Mother said, stroking her hair back
+from her forehead.
+
+"I'd be more alive in the garden, I think," said Bobbie.
+
+But she could not stay in the garden.  The hollyhocks and the asters
+and the late roses all seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
+It was one of those still, shiny autumn days, when everything does
+seem to be waiting.
+
+Bobbie could not wait.
+
+"I'll go down to the station," she said, "and talk to Perks and ask
+about the signalman's little boy."
+
+So she went down.  On the way she passed the old lady from the Post-
+office, who gave her a kiss and a hug, but, rather to Bobbie's
+surprise, no words except:--
+
+"God bless you, love--" and, after a pause, "run along--do."
+
+The draper's boy, who had sometimes been a little less than civil
+and a little more than contemptuous, now touched his cap, and
+uttered the remarkable words:--
+
+"'Morning, Miss, I'm sure--"
+
+The blacksmith, coming along with an open newspaper in his hand, was
+even more strange in his manner.  He grinned broadly, though, as a
+rule, he was a man not given to smiles, and waved the newspaper long
+before he came up to her.  And as he passed her, he said, in answer
+to her "Good morning":--
+
+"Good morning to you, Missie, and many of them!  I wish you joy,
+that I do!"
+
+"Oh!" said Bobbie to herself, and her heart quickened its beats,
+"something IS going to happen!  I know it is--everyone is so odd,
+like people are in dreams."
+
+The Station Master wrung her hand warmly.  In fact he worked it up
+and down like a pump-handle.  But he gave her no reason for this
+unusually enthusiastic greeting.  He only said:--
+
+"The 11.54's a bit late, Miss--the extra luggage this holiday time,"
+and went away very quickly into that inner Temple of his into which
+even Bobbie dared not follow him.
+
+Perks was not to be seen, and Bobbie shared the solitude of the
+platform with the Station Cat.  This tortoiseshell lady, usually of
+a retiring disposition, came to-day to rub herself against the brown
+stockings of Bobbie with arched back, waving tail, and reverberating
+purrs.
+
+"Dear me!" said Bobbie, stooping to stroke her, "how very kind
+everybody is to-day--even you, Pussy!"
+
+Perks did not appear until the 11.54 was signalled, and then he,
+like everybody else that morning, had a newspaper in his hand.
+
+"Hullo!" he said, "'ere you are.  Well, if THIS is the train, it'll
+be smart work!  Well, God bless you, my dear!  I see it in the
+paper, and I don't think I was ever so glad of anything in all my
+born days!"  He looked at Bobbie a moment, then said, "One I must
+have, Miss, and no offence, I know, on a day like this 'ere!" and
+with that he kissed her, first on one cheek and then on the other.
+
+"You ain't offended, are you?" he asked anxiously.  "I ain't took
+too great a liberty?  On a day like this, you know--"
+
+"No, no," said Bobbie, "of course it's not a liberty, dear Mr.
+Perks; we love you quite as much as if you were an uncle of ours--
+but--on a day like WHAT?"
+
+"Like this 'ere!" said Perks.  "Don't I tell you I see it in the
+paper?"
+
+"Saw WHAT in the paper?" asked Bobbie, but already the 11.54 was
+steaming into the station and the Station Master was looking at all
+the places where Perks was not and ought to have been.
+
+Bobbie was left standing alone, the Station Cat watching her from
+under the bench with friendly golden eyes.
+
+Of course you know already exactly what was going to happen.  Bobbie
+was not so clever.  She had the vague, confused, expectant feeling
+that comes to one's heart in dreams.  What her heart expected I
+can't tell--perhaps the very thing that you and I know was going to
+happen--but her mind expected nothing; it was almost blank, and felt
+nothing but tiredness and stupidness and an empty feeling, like your
+body has when you have been a long walk and it is very far indeed
+past your proper dinner-time.
+
+Only three people got out of the 11.54.  The first was a countryman
+with two baskety boxes full of live chickens who stuck their russet
+heads out anxiously through the wicker bars; the second was Miss
+Peckitt, the grocer's wife's cousin, with a tin box and three brown-
+paper parcels; and the third--
+
+"Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!"  That scream went like a knife into the
+heart of everyone in the train, and people put their heads out of
+the windows to see a tall pale man with lips set in a thin close
+line, and a little girl clinging to him with arms and legs, while
+his arms went tightly round her.
+
+         *          *          *          *          *          *
+
+"I knew something wonderful was going to happen," said Bobbie, as
+they went up the road, "but I didn't think it was going to be this.
+Oh, my Daddy, my Daddy!"
+
+"Then didn't Mother get my letter?" Father asked.
+
+"There weren't any letters this morning.  Oh! Daddy! it IS really
+you, isn't it?"
+
+The clasp of a hand she had not forgotten assured her that it was.
+"You must go in by yourself, Bobbie, and tell Mother quite quietly
+that it's all right.  They've caught the man who did it.  Everyone
+knows now that it wasn't your Daddy."
+
+"_I_ always knew it wasn't," said Bobbie.  "Me and Mother and our
+old gentleman."
+
+"Yes," he said, "it's all his doing.  Mother wrote and told me you
+had found out.  And she told me what you'd been to her.  My own
+little girl!"  They stopped a minute then.
+
+And now I see them crossing the field.  Bobbie goes into the house,
+trying to keep her eyes from speaking before her lips have found the
+right words to "tell Mother quite quietly" that the sorrow and the
+struggle and the parting are over and done, and that Father has come
+home.
+
+I see Father walking in the garden, waiting--waiting.  He is looking
+at the flowers, and each flower is a miracle to eyes that all these
+months of Spring and Summer have seen only flagstones and gravel and
+a little grudging grass.  But his eyes keep turning towards the
+house.  And presently he leaves the garden and goes to stand outside
+the nearest door.  It is the back door, and across the yard the
+swallows are circling.  They are getting ready to fly away from cold
+winds and keen frost to the land where it is always summer.  They
+are the same swallows that the children built the little clay nests
+for.
+
+Now the house door opens.  Bobbie's voice calls:--
+
+"Come in, Daddy; come in!"
+
+He goes in and the door is shut.  I think we will not open the door
+or follow him.  I think that just now we are not wanted there.  I
+think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away.  At the
+end of the field, among the thin gold spikes of grass and the
+harebells and Gipsy roses and St. John's Wort, we may just take one
+last look, over our shoulders, at the white house where neither we
+nor anyone else is wanted now.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit
+
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