The Railway Children
“Here, stop a bit,” she said.
So they stopped.
“Those roses,” said she.
“Did you like them?” said Phyllis; “they were as fresh as fresh. _I_
made the needle-book, but it was Bobbie's present.” She skipped joyously
as she spoke.
“Here's your basket,” said the Post-office woman. She went in and
brought out the basket. It was full of fat, red gooseberries.
“I dare say Perks's children would like them,” said she.
“You ARE an old dear,” said Phyllis, throwing her arms around the old
lady's fat waist. “Perks WILL be pleased.”
“He won't be half so pleased as I was with your needle-book and the tie
and the pretty flowers and all,” said the old lady, patting Phyllis's
shoulder. “You're good little souls, that you are. Look here. I've got a
pram round the back in the wood-lodge. It was got for my Emmie's first,
that didn't live but six months, and she never had but that one. I'd
like Mrs. Perks to have it. It 'ud be a help to her with that great boy
of hers. Will you take it along?”
“OH!” said all the children together.
When Mrs. Ransome had got out the perambulator and taken off the careful
papers that covered it, and dusted it all over, she said:--
“Well, there it is. I don't know but what I'd have given it to her
before if I'd thought of it. Only I didn't quite know if she'd accept of
it from me. You tell her it was my Emmie's little one's pram--”
“Oh, ISN'T it nice to think there is going to be a real live baby in it
again!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ransome, sighing, and then laughing; “here, I'll give
you some peppermint cushions for the little ones, and then you run along
before I give you the roof off my head and the clothes off my back.”
All the things that had been collected for Perks were packed into
the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis
wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks lived.
The house was very tidy. On the window ledge was a jug of wild-flowers,
big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.
There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house, and a partly washed
boy put his head round the door.
“Mother's a-changing of herself,” he said.
“Down in a minute,” a voice sounded down the narrow, freshly scrubbed
stairs.
The children waited. Next moment the stairs creaked and Mrs. Perks came
down, buttoning her bodice. Her hair was brushed very smooth and tight,
and her face shone with soap and water.
“I'm a bit late changing, Miss,” she said to Bobbie, “owing to me having
had a extry clean-up to-day, along o' Perks happening to name its being
his birthday. I don't know what put it into his head to think of such
a thing. We keeps the children's birthdays, of course; but him and
me--we're too old for such like, as a general rule.”
“We knew it was his birthday,” said Peter, “and we've got some presents
for him outside in the perambulator.”
As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs. Perks gasped. When they
were all unpacked, she surprised and horrified the children by sitting
suddenly down on a wooden chair and bursting into tears.
“Oh, don't!” said everybody; “oh, please don't!” And Peter added,
perhaps a little impatiently: “What on earth is the matter? You don't
mean to say you don't like it?”
Mrs. Perks only sobbed. The Perks children, now as shiny-faced as anyone
could wish, stood at the wash-house door, and scowled at the intruders.
There was a silence, an awkward silence.
“DON'T you like it?” said Peter, again, while his sisters patted Mrs.
Perks on the back.
She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.
“There, there, don't you mind me. I'M all right!” she said. “Like it?
Why, it's a birthday such as Perks never 'ad, not even when 'e was a boy
and stayed with his uncle, who was a corn chandler in his own account.
He failed afterwards. Like it? Oh--” and then she went on and said all
sorts of things that I won't write down, because I am sure that Peter
and Bobbie and Phyllis would not like me to. Their ears got hotter and
hotter, and their faces redder and redder, at the kind things Mrs. Perks
said. They felt they had done nothing to deserve all this praise.
At last Peter said: “Look here, we're glad you're pleased. But if you go
on saying things like that, we must go home. And we did want to stay and
see if Mr. Perks is pleased, too. But we can't stand this.”
“I won't say another single word,” said Mrs. Perks, with a beaming face,
“but that needn't stop me thinking, need it? For if ever--”
“Can we have a plate for the buns?” Bobbie asked abruptly. And then Mrs.
Perks hastily laid the table for tea, and the buns and the honey and
the gooseberries were displayed on plates, and the roses were put in two
glass jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs. Perks said, “fit for a
Prince.”
“To think!” she said, “me getting the place tidy early, and the little
'uns getting the wild-flowers and all--when never did I think there'd be
anything more for him except the ounce of his pet particular that I
got o' Saturday and been saving up for 'im ever since. Bless us! 'e IS
early!”
Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the little front gate.
“Oh,” whispered Bobbie, “let's hide in the back kitchen, and YOU tell
him about it. But give him the tobacco first, because you got it for
him. And when you've told him, we'll all come in and shout, 'Many happy
returns!'”
It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite come off. To begin with,
there was only just time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to rush into
the wash-house, pushing the young and open-mouthed Perks children in
front of them. There was not time to shut the door, so that, without at
all meaning it, they had to listen to what went on in the kitchen. The
wash-house was a tight fit for the Perks children and the Three Chimneys
children, as well as all the wash-house's proper furniture, including
the mangle and the copper.
“Hullo, old woman!” they heard Mr. Perks's voice say; “here's a pretty
set-out!”
“It's your birthday tea, Bert,” said Mrs. Perks, “and here's a ounce of
your extry particular. I got it o' Saturday along o' your happening to
remember it was your birthday to-day.”
“Good old girl!” said Mr. Perks, and there was a sound of a kiss.
“But what's that pram doing here? And what's all these bundles? And
where did you get the sweetstuff, and--”
The children did not hear what Mrs. Perks replied, because just then
Bobbie gave a start, put her hand in her pocket, and all her body grew
stiff with horror.
“Oh!” she whispered to the others, “whatever shall we do? I forgot to
put the labels on any of the things! He won't know what's from who.
He'll think it's all US, and that we're trying to be grand or charitable
or something horrid.”
“Hush!” said Peter.
And then they heard the voice of Mr. Perks, loud and rather angry.
“I don't care,” he said; “I won't stand it, and so I tell you straight.”
“But,” said Mrs. Perks, “it's them children you make such a fuss
about--the children from the Three Chimneys.”
“I don't care,” said Perks, firmly, “not if it was a angel from Heaven.
We've got on all right all these years and no favours asked. I'm not
going to begin these sort of charity goings-on at my time of life, so
don't you think it, Nell.”
“Oh, hush!” said poor Mrs Perks; “Bert, shut your silly tongue, for
goodness' sake. The all three of 'ems in the wash-house a-listening to
every word you speaks.”
“Then I'll give them something to listen to,” said the angry Perks;
“I've spoke my mind to them afore now, and I'll do it again,” he added,
and he took two strides to the wash-house door, and flung it wide
open--as wide, that is, as it would go, with the tightly packed children
behind it.
“Come out,” said Perks, “come out and tell me what you mean by it. 'Ave
I ever complained to you of being short, as you comes this charity lay
over me?”
“OH!” said Phyllis, “I thought you'd be so pleased; I'll never try to be
kind to anyone else as long as I live. No, I won't, not never.”
She burst into tears.
“We didn't mean any harm,” said Peter.
“It ain't what you means so much as what you does,” said Perks.
“Oh, DON'T!” cried Bobbie, trying hard to be braver than Phyllis, and to
find more words than Peter had done for explaining in. “We thought you'd
love it. We always have things on our birthdays.”
“Oh, yes,” said Perks, “your own relations; that's different.”
“Oh, no,” Bobbie answered. “NOT our own relations. All the servants
always gave us things at home, and us to them when it was their
birthdays. And when it was mine, and Mother gave me the brooch like a
buttercup, Mrs. Viney gave me two lovely glass pots, and nobody thought
she was coming the charity lay over us.”
“If it had been glass pots here,” said Perks, “I wouldn't ha' said so
much. It's there being all this heaps and heaps of things I can't stand.
No--nor won't, neither.”
“But they're not all from us--” said Peter, “only we forgot to put the
labels on. They're from all sorts of people in the village.”
“Who put 'em up to it, I'd like to know?” asked Perks.
“Why, we did,” sniffed Phyllis.
Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with what
Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy despair.
“So you've been round telling the neighbours we can't make both
ends meet? Well, now you've disgraced us as deep as you can in the
neighbourhood, you can just take the whole bag of tricks back w'ere it
come from. Very much obliged, I'm sure. I don't doubt but what you meant
it kind, but I'd rather not be acquainted with you any longer if it's
all the same to you.” He deliberately turned the chair round so that
his back was turned to the children. The legs of the chair grated on the
brick floor, and that was the only sound that broke the silence.
Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.
“Look here,” she said, “this is most awful.”
“That's what I says,” said Perks, not turning round.
“Look here,” said Bobbie, desperately, “we'll go if you like--and you
needn't be friends with us any more if you don't want, but--”
“WE shall always be friends with YOU, however nasty you are to us,”
sniffed Phyllis, wildly.
“Be quiet,” said Peter, in a fierce aside.
“But before we go,” Bobbie went on desperately, “do let us show you the
labels we wrote to put on the things.”
“I don't want to see no labels,” said Perks, “except proper luggage ones
in my own walk of life. Do you think I've kept respectable and outer
debt on what I gets, and her having to take in washing, to be give away
for a laughing-stock to all the neighbours?”
“Laughing?” said Peter; “you don't know.”
“You're a very hasty gentleman,” whined Phyllis; “you know you were
wrong once before, about us not telling you the secret about the
Russian. Do let Bobbie tell you about the labels!”
“Well. Go ahead!” said Perks, grudgingly.
“Well, then,” said Bobbie, fumbling miserably, yet not without hope, in
her tightly stuffed pocket, “we wrote down all the things everybody said
when they gave us the things, with the people's names, because Mother
said we ought to be careful--because--but I wrote down what she
said--and you'll see.”
But Bobbie could not read the labels just at once. She had to swallow
once or twice before she could begin.
Mrs. Perks had been crying steadily ever since her husband had opened
the wash-house door. Now she caught her breath, choked, and said:--
“Don't you upset yourself, Missy. _I_ know you meant it kind if he
doesn't.”
“May I read the labels?” said Bobbie, crying on to the slips as she
tried to sort them. “Mother's first. It says:--
“'Little Clothes for Mrs. Perks's children.' Mother said, 'I'll find
some of Phyllis's things that she's grown out of if you're quite sure