G. N. and S. R.34576Return at once toWhite 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,Ithink,” 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.
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?”
“Idunno,” 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:—
379663
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.”
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:—