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by
With drawings by C.E. BROCK
LONDON
Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co.
Copyright, 1906.
By E. Nesbit
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON AND CO., LTD.
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 wallpaper. They had a kind and merry nurse-maid, 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 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, and 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, and 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,
Page 5
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.
anything. And it was Father who mended his doll's cradle when no one else could; and with a little glue and some bits of wood and a penknife 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 it 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 a Saturday afternoon to it, and you shall 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 shewn 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 him quickly, dear. It does break up an
evening so, and it's nearly the children's bed-time."
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 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 every one heaved a breath of relief.
"They're going now," said Phyllis; "he's
rung to have them shewn out."
But instead of shewing anybody out, Ruth shewed 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 bed-time," she said. "Ruth will put you to
bed."
"But you promised we should sit up late to-night 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 any one
dead--or--"
"Nobody's dead--no," said Mother, and she almost
seemed to push Roberta away. "I can't tell you anything
to-night, 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
armchair. 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 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 to-morrow
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 to Germany 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 lamb, 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 turtle-shell 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.
"O, 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 German 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 dark
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 luggage 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 shoelaces 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 up-hill. 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 shewed 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.
Every one 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.
"O dear," said Phyllis, "I wish we hadn't
come!" and she knocked a chair over.
"Only the rats!" said Peter, in the dark.
She struck a match and relighted the candle and every one 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; and even in the pantry there was
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. Every one 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 table-cloth and
then--"
The table-cloth 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.
Every one was very very tired, but every one 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 basiny 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 stone crop and
wall-flowers, and even a clump of purple flag-flowers, at the far
corner.
"This is far far farandaway 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 gray 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 gray and yellow rocks sticking out like
candied peel out of 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. Every one 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 porter's room, where the lamps
are, and the Railway almanac on the wall, and one porter half asleep behind
Lloyd's Weekly News.
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 brick, 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 any one 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 farm-house 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-tine 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 horsebeans 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
perambula-
tor 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 never 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; "tomorrow
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:--
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 held firmly by the jacket, with an old carpenter's-bag full of coal in his trembling clutch.
G.N.& S.R.
34576
Return at once to White Heather Sidings
"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 ha 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 agonized 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 some one 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
catechisms 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.
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 he, 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 weathers 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. O dear, O 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 war 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 any one you meet on a lonely
country 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 beautifullest you ever," 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
inside 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 coals 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. Bobby 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 Bobby, 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, sniffing.
"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 'emr 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--some one 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 some one 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:--
and felt that this was the beginning of what would be a most interesting collection.
379
663
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 any one 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 year 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 Brand's 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 shewed Mother the list he had written, Mother laughed. It
was a laugh, Bobbie decided, though it was rather odd and
feeble.
"Nonsense," said Mother, lying 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 for 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 Brand's Essence,
though," said he.
"No," said Bobbie, firmly, "but you will tomorrow. 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 showman 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 was 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
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
Page 70come down by? Say it is for Peter that was sorry about the coals and he will know all right. "ROBERTA. "PHYLLIS. "PETER."
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, Sir," 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."
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 very 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, every one at once found itself taking part in a crying-party.
SHE IS NEARLY WELL THANK YOU
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
every one 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."
Afterward when the children were alone, Bobbie said:--
"Isn't Mother splendid? You catch any other grown-up saying
it was sorry it 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
Porter's 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 shews," 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 mainline 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 mainline 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'indand nor any train on the
line."
"But the engine's green," said Phyllis.
"Yes, Miss," said Perks, "so's a snail some
seasons of 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 were 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 every one 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 shewed signs of meaning to throw coals,
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 dog-cart, 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 bony 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 dog-cart
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 every one that we're
poor. But you aren't every one, 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 Club, too, the same as Mrs.
Viney?"
The Doctor was silent. He was rather poor himself, and he had been
rather pleased at getting a new family to attend. So I think his feelings
at that