The Railway Children
Mr. Perks wouldn't be offended and think it's meant for charity. I'd
like to do some little thing for him, because he's so kind to you. I
can't do much because we're poor ourselves.'”
Bobbie paused.
“That's all right,” said Perks, “your Ma's a born lady. We'll keep the
little frocks, and what not, Nell.”
“Then there's the perambulator and the gooseberries, and the sweets,”
said Bobbie, “they're from Mrs. Ransome. She said: 'I dare say Mr.
Perks's children would like the sweets. And the perambulator was got for
my Emmie's first--it didn't live but six months, and she's never had but
that one. I'd like Mrs. Perks to have it. It would be a help with her
fine boy. I'd have given it before if I'd been sure she'd accept of
it from me.' She told me to tell you,” Bobbie added, “that it was her
Emmie's little one's pram.”
“I can't send that pram back, Bert,” said Mrs Perks, firmly, “and I
won't. So don't you ask me--”
“I'm not a-asking anything,” said Perks, gruffly.
“Then the shovel,” said Bobbie. “Mr. James made it for you himself. And
he said--where is it? Oh, yes, here! He said, 'You tell Mr. Perks it's a
pleasure to make a little trifle for a man as is so much respected,' and
then he said he wished he could shoe your children and his own children,
like they do the horses, because, well, he knew what shoe leather was.”
“James is a good enough chap,” said Perks.
“Then the honey,” said Bobbie, in haste, “and the boot-laces. HE said
he respected a man that paid his way--and the butcher said the same. And
the old turnpike woman said many was the time you'd lent her a hand
with her garden when you were a lad--and things like that came home to
roost--I don't know what she meant. And everybody who gave anything said
they liked you, and it was a very good idea of ours; and nobody said
anything about charity or anything horrid like that. And the old
gentleman gave Peter a gold pound for you, and said you were a man who
knew your work. And I thought you'd LOVE to know how fond people are
of you, and I never was so unhappy in my life. Good-bye. I hope you'll
forgive us some day--”
She could say no more, and she turned to go.
“Stop,” said Perks, still with his back to them; “I take back every word
I've said contrary to what you'd wish. Nell, set on the kettle.”
“We'll take the things away if you're unhappy about them,” said Peter;
“but I think everybody'll be most awfully disappointed, as well as us.”
“I'm not unhappy about them,” said Perks; “I don't know,” he added,
suddenly wheeling the chair round and showing a very odd-looking
screwed-up face, “I don't know as ever I was better pleased. Not so much
with the presents--though they're an A1 collection--but the kind respect
of our neighbours. That's worth having, eh, Nell?”
“I think it's all worth having,” said Mrs. Perks, “and you've made a
most ridiculous fuss about nothing, Bert, if you ask me.”
“No, I ain't,” said Perks, firmly; “if a man didn't respect hisself, no
one wouldn't do it for him.”
“But everyone respects you,” said Bobbie; “they all said so.”
“I knew you'd like it when you really understood,” said Phyllis,
brightly.
“Humph! You'll stay to tea?” said Mr. Perks.
Later on Peter proposed Mr. Perks's health. And Mr. Perks proposed a
toast, also honoured in tea, and the toast was, “May the garland of
friendship be ever green,” which was much more poetical than anyone had
expected from him.
* * * * * *
“Jolly good little kids, those,” said Mr. Perks to his wife as they went
to bed.
“Oh, they're all right, bless their hearts,” said his wife; “it's you
that's the aggravatingest old thing that ever was. I was ashamed of
you--I tell you--”
“You didn't need to be, old gal. I climbed down handsome soon as I
understood it wasn't charity. But charity's what I never did abide, and
won't neither.”
* * * * * *
All sorts of people were made happy by that birthday party. Mr. Perks
and Mrs. Perks and the little Perkses by all the nice things and by the
kind thoughts of their neighbours; the Three Chimneys children by the
success, undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of their plan; and Mrs.
Ransome every time she saw the fat Perks baby in the perambulator.
Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to thank people for their kind
birthday presents, and after each visit felt that she had a better
friend than she had thought.
“Yes,” said Perks, reflectively, “it's not so much what you does as what
you means; that's what I say. Now if it had been charity--”
“Oh, drat charity,” said Mrs. Perks; “nobody won't offer you
charity, Bert, however much you was to want it, I lay. That was just
friendliness, that was.”
When the clergyman called on Mrs. Perks, she told him all about it. “It
WAS friendliness, wasn't it, Sir?” said she.
“I think,” said the clergyman, “it was what is sometimes called
loving-kindness.”
So you see it was all right in the end. But if one does that sort of
thing, one has to be careful to do it in the right way. For, as Mr.
Perks said, when he had time to think it over, it's not so much what you
do, as what you mean.
Chapter X. The terrible secret.
When they first went to live at Three Chimneys, the children had talked
a great deal about their Father, and had asked a great many questions
about him, and what he was doing and where he was and when he would come
home. Mother always answered their questions as well as she could. But
as the time went on they grew to speak less of him. Bobbie had felt
almost from the first that for some strange miserable reason these
questions hurt Mother and made her sad. And little by little the others
came to have this feeling, too, though they could not have put it into
words.
One day, when Mother was working so hard that she could not leave off
even for ten minutes, Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare room
that they called Mother's workshop. It had hardly any furniture. Just
a table and a chair and a rug. But always big pots of flowers on the
window-sills and on the mantelpiece. The children saw to that. And from
the three long uncurtained windows the beautiful stretch of meadow and
moorland, the far violet of the hills, and the unchanging changefulness
of cloud and sky.
“Here's your tea, Mother-love,” said Bobbie; “do drink it while it's
hot.”
Mother laid down her pen among the pages that were scattered all over
the table, pages covered with her writing, which was almost as plain
as print, and much prettier. She ran her hands into her hair, as if she
were going to pull it out by handfuls.
“Poor dear head,” said Bobbie, “does it ache?”
“No--yes--not much,” said Mother. “Bobbie, do you think Peter and Phil
are FORGETTING Father?”
“NO,” said Bobbie, indignantly. “Why?”
“You none of you ever speak of him now.”
Bobbie stood first on one leg and then on the other.
“We often talk about him when we're by ourselves,” she said.
“But not to me,” said Mother. “Why?”
Bobbie did not find it easy to say why.
“I--you--” she said and stopped. She went over to the window and looked
out.
“Bobbie, come here,” said her Mother, and Bobbie came.
“Now,” said Mother, putting her arm round Bobbie and laying her ruffled
head against Bobbie's shoulder, “try to tell me, dear.”
Bobbie fidgeted.
“Tell Mother.”
“Well, then,” said Bobbie, “I thought you were so unhappy about Daddy
not being here, it made you worse when I talked about him. So I stopped
doing it.”
“And the others?”
“I don't know about the others,” said Bobbie. “I never said anything
about THAT to them. But I expect they felt the same about it as me.”
“Bobbie dear,” said Mother, still leaning her head against her, “I'll
tell you. Besides parting from Father, he and I have had a great
sorrow--oh, terrible--worse than anything you can think of, and at first
it did hurt to hear you all talking of him as if everything were just
the same. But it would be much more terrible if you were to forget him.
That would be worse than anything.”
“The trouble,” said Bobbie, in a very little voice--“I promised I
would never ask you any questions, and I never have, have I? But--the
trouble--it won't last always?”
“No,” said Mother, “the worst will be over when Father comes home to
us.”
“I wish I could comfort you,” said Bobbie.
“Oh, my dear, do you suppose you don't? Do you think I haven't noticed
how good you've all been, not quarrelling nearly as much as you used
to--and all the little kind things you do for me--the flowers, and
cleaning my shoes, and tearing up to make my bed before I get time to do
it myself?”
Bobbie HAD sometimes wondered whether Mother noticed these things.
“That's nothing,” she said, “to what--”
“I MUST get on with my work,” said Mother, giving Bobbie one last
squeeze. “Don't say anything to the others.”
That evening in the hour before bed-time instead of reading to the
children Mother told them stories of the games she and Father used
to have when they were children and lived near each other in the
country--tales of the adventures of Father with Mother's brothers when
they were all boys together. Very funny stories they were, and the
children laughed as they listened.
“Uncle Edward died before he was grown up, didn't he?” said Phyllis, as
Mother lighted the bedroom candles.
“Yes, dear,” said Mother, “you would have loved him. He was such a
brave boy, and so adventurous. Always in mischief, and yet friends with
everybody in spite of it. And your Uncle Reggie's in Ceylon--yes, and
Father's away, too. But I think they'd all like to think we'd enjoyed
talking about the things they used to do. Don't you think so?”
“Not Uncle Edward,” said Phyllis, in a shocked tone; “he's in Heaven.”
“You don't suppose he's forgotten us and all the old times, because God
has taken him, any more than I forget him. Oh, no, he remembers. He's
only away for a little time. We shall see him some day.”
“And Uncle Reggie--and Father, too?” said Peter.
“Yes,” said Mother. “Uncle Reggie and Father, too. Good night, my
darlings.”
“Good night,” said everyone. Bobbie hugged her mother more closely even
than usual, and whispered in her ear, “Oh, I do love you so, Mummy--I
do--I do--”
When Bobbie came to think it all over, she tried not to wonder what
the great trouble was. But she could not always help it. Father was not
dead--like poor Uncle Edward--Mother had said so. And he was not ill, or
Mother would have been with him. Being poor wasn't the trouble. Bobbie
knew it was something nearer the heart than money could be.
“I mustn't try to think what it is,” she told herself; “no, I mustn't. I
AM glad Mother noticed about us not quarrelling so much. We'll keep that
up.”
And alas, that very afternoon she and Peter had what Peter called a
first-class shindy.
They had not been a week at Three Chimneys before they had asked Mother
to let them have a piece of garden each for their very own, and she had
agreed, and the south border under the peach trees had been divided into
three pieces and they were allowed to plant whatever they liked there.
Phyllis had planted mignonette and nasturtium and Virginia Stock in
hers. The seeds came up, and though they looked just like weeds, Phyllis
believed that they would bear flowers some day. The Virginia Stock
justified her faith quite soon, and her garden was gay with a band of
bright little flowers, pink and white and red and mauve.
“I can't weed for fear I pull up the wrong things,” she used to say
comfortably; “it saves such a lot of work.”
Peter sowed vegetable seeds in his--carrots and onions and turnips.
The seed was given to him by the farmer who lived in the nice