The Railway Children
“ONLY the rats!” said Peter, in the dark.
Chapter II. Peter's coal-mine.
“What fun!” said Mother, in the dark, feeling for the matches on the
table. “How frightened the poor mice were--I don't believe they were
rats at all.”
She struck a match and relighted the candle and everyone looked at each
other by its winky, blinky light.
“Well,” she said, “you've often wanted something to happen and now it
has. This is quite an adventure, isn't it? I told Mrs. Viney to get us
some bread and butter, and meat and things, and to have supper ready. I
suppose she's laid it in the dining-room. So let's go and see.”
The dining-room opened out of the kitchen. It looked much darker than
the kitchen when they went in with the one candle. Because the kitchen
was whitewashed, but the dining-room was dark wood from floor to
ceiling, and across the ceiling there were heavy black beams. There was
a muddled maze of dusty furniture--the breakfast-room furniture from
the old home where they had lived all their lives. It seemed a very long
time ago, and a very long way off.
There was the table certainly, and there were chairs, but there was no
supper.
“Let's look in the other rooms,” said Mother; and they looked. And in
each room was the same kind of blundering half-arrangement of furniture,
and fire-irons and crockery, and all sorts of odd things on the floor,
but there was nothing to eat; even in the pantry there were only a rusty
cake-tin and a broken plate with whitening mixed in it.
“What a horrid old woman!” said Mother; “she's just walked off with the
money and not got us anything to eat at all.”
“Then shan't we have any supper at all?” asked Phyllis, dismayed,
stepping back on to a soap-dish that cracked responsively.
“Oh, yes,” said Mother, “only it'll mean unpacking one of those big
cases that we put in the cellar. Phil, do mind where you're walking to,
there's a dear. Peter, hold the light.”
The cellar door opened out of the kitchen. There were five wooden steps
leading down. It wasn't a proper cellar at all, the children thought,
because its ceiling went up as high as the kitchen's. A bacon-rack hung
under its ceiling. There was wood in it, and coal. Also the big cases.
Peter held the candle, all on one side, while Mother tried to open the
great packing-case. It was very securely nailed down.
“Where's the hammer?” asked Peter.
“That's just it,” said Mother. “I'm afraid it's inside the box. But
there's a coal-shovel--and there's the kitchen poker.”
And with these she tried to get the case open.
“Let me do it,” said Peter, thinking he could do it better himself.
Everyone thinks this when he sees another person stirring a fire, or
opening a box, or untying a knot in a bit of string.
“You'll hurt your hands, Mammy,” said Roberta; “let me.”
“I wish Father was here,” said Phyllis; “he'd get it open in two shakes.
What are you kicking me for, Bobbie?”
“I wasn't,” said Roberta.
Just then the first of the long nails in the packing-case began to come
out with a scrunch. Then a lath was raised and then another, till all
four stood up with the long nails in them shining fiercely like iron
teeth in the candle-light.
“Hooray!” said Mother; “here are some candles--the very first thing! You
girls go and light them. You'll find some saucers and things. Just drop
a little candle-grease in the saucer and stick the candle upright in
it.”
“How many shall we light?”
“As many as ever you like,” said Mother, gaily. “The great thing is
to be cheerful. Nobody can be cheerful in the dark except owls and
dormice.”
So the girls lighted candles. The head of the first match flew off and
stuck to Phyllis's finger; but, as Roberta said, it was only a little
burn, and she might have had to be a Roman martyr and be burned whole if
she had happened to live in the days when those things were fashionable.
Then, when the dining-room was lighted by fourteen candles, Roberta
fetched coal and wood and lighted a fire.
“It's very cold for May,” she said, feeling what a grown-up thing it was
to say.
The fire-light and the candle-light made the dining-room look very
different, for now you could see that the dark walls were of wood,
carved here and there into little wreaths and loops.
The girls hastily 'tidied' the room, which meant putting the chairs
against the wall, and piling all the odds and ends into a corner and
partly hiding them with the big leather arm-chair that Father used to
sit in after dinner.
“Bravo!” cried Mother, coming in with a tray full of things. “This is
something like! I'll just get a tablecloth and then--”
The tablecloth was in a box with a proper lock that was opened with a
key and not with a shovel, and when the cloth was spread on the table, a
real feast was laid out on it.
Everyone was very, very tired, but everyone cheered up at the sight of
the funny and delightful supper. There were biscuits, the Marie and the
plain kind, sardines, preserved ginger, cooking raisins, and candied
peel and marmalade.
“What a good thing Aunt Emma packed up all the odds and ends out of the
Store cupboard,” said Mother. “Now, Phil, DON'T put the marmalade spoon
in among the sardines.”
“No, I won't, Mother,” said Phyllis, and put it down among the Marie
biscuits.
“Let's drink Aunt Emma's health,” said Roberta, suddenly; “what should
we have done if she hadn't packed up these things? Here's to Aunt Emma!”
And the toast was drunk in ginger wine and water, out of
willow-patterned tea-cups, because the glasses couldn't be found.
They all felt that they had been a little hard on Aunt Emma. She wasn't
a nice cuddly person like Mother, but after all it was she who had
thought of packing up the odds and ends of things to eat.
It was Aunt Emma, too, who had aired all the sheets ready; and the men
who had moved the furniture had put the bedsteads together, so the beds
were soon made.
“Good night, chickies,” said Mother. “I'm sure there aren't any rats.
But I'll leave my door open, and then if a mouse comes, you need only
scream, and I'll come and tell it exactly what I think of it.”
Then she went to her own room. Roberta woke to hear the little
travelling clock chime two. It sounded like a church clock ever so far
away, she always thought. And she heard, too, Mother still moving about
in her room.
Next morning Roberta woke Phyllis by pulling her hair gently, but quite
enough for her purpose.
“Wassermarrer?” asked Phyllis, still almost wholly asleep.
“Wake up! wake up!” said Roberta. “We're in the new house--don't you
remember? No servants or anything. Let's get up and begin to be useful.
We'll just creep down mouse-quietly, and have everything beautiful
before Mother gets up. I've woke Peter. He'll be dressed as soon as we
are.”
So they dressed quietly and quickly. Of course, there was no water in
their room, so when they got down they washed as much as they thought
was necessary under the spout of the pump in the yard. One pumped and
the other washed. It was splashy but interesting.
“It's much more fun than basin washing,” said Roberta. “How sparkly
the weeds are between the stones, and the moss on the roof--oh, and the
flowers!”
The roof of the back kitchen sloped down quite low. It was made
of thatch and it had moss on it, and house-leeks and stonecrop and
wallflowers, and even a clump of purple flag-flowers, at the far corner.
“This is far, far, far and away prettier than Edgecombe Villa,” said
Phyllis. “I wonder what the garden's like.”
“We mustn't think of the garden yet,” said Roberta, with earnest energy.
“Let's go in and begin to work.”
They lighted the fire and put the kettle on, and they arranged the
crockery for breakfast; they could not find all the right things, but
a glass ash-tray made an excellent salt-cellar, and a newish baking-tin
seemed as if it would do to put bread on, if they had any.
When there seemed to be nothing more that they could do, they went out
again into the fresh bright morning.
“We'll go into the garden now,” said Peter. But somehow they couldn't
find the garden. They went round the house and round the house. The yard
occupied the back, and across it were stables and outbuildings. On the
other three sides the house stood simply in a field, without a yard
of garden to divide it from the short smooth turf. And yet they had
certainly seen the garden wall the night before.
It was a hilly country. Down below they could see the line of the
railway, and the black yawning mouth of a tunnel. The station was out of
sight. There was a great bridge with tall arches running across one end
of the valley.
“Never mind the garden,” said Peter; “let's go down and look at the
railway. There might be trains passing.”
“We can see them from here,” said Roberta, slowly; “let's sit down a
bit.”
So they all sat down on a great flat grey stone that had pushed itself
up out of the grass; it was one of many that lay about on the hillside,
and when Mother came out to look for them at eight o'clock, she found
them deeply asleep in a contented, sun-warmed bunch.
They had made an excellent fire, and had set the kettle on it at about
half-past five. So that by eight the fire had been out for some time,
the water had all boiled away, and the bottom was burned out of the
kettle. Also they had not thought of washing the crockery before they
set the table.
“But it doesn't matter--the cups and saucers, I mean,” said Mother.
“Because I've found another room--I'd quite forgotten there was one. And
it's magic! And I've boiled the water for tea in a saucepan.”
The forgotten room opened out of the kitchen. In the agitation and half
darkness the night before its door had been mistaken for a cupboard's.
It was a little square room, and on its table, all nicely set out, was a
joint of cold roast beef, with bread, butter, cheese, and a pie.
“Pie for breakfast!” cried Peter; “how perfectly ripping!”
“It isn't pigeon-pie,” said Mother; “it's only apple. Well, this is the
supper we ought to have had last night. And there was a note from Mrs.
Viney. Her son-in-law has broken his arm, and she had to get home early.
She's coming this morning at ten.”
That was a wonderful breakfast. It is unusual to begin the day with
cold apple pie, but the children all said they would rather have it than
meat.
“You see it's more like dinner than breakfast to us,” said Peter,
passing his plate for more, “because we were up so early.”
The day passed in helping Mother to unpack and arrange things. Six small
legs quite ached with running about while their owners carried clothes
and crockery and all sorts of things to their proper places. It was not
till quite late in the afternoon that Mother said:--
“There! That'll do for to-day. I'll lie down for an hour, so as to be as
fresh as a lark by supper-time.”
Then they all looked at each other. Each of the three expressive
countenances expressed the same thought. That thought was double,
and consisted, like the bits of information in the Child's Guide to
Knowledge, of a question and an answer.
Q. Where shall we go?
A. To the railway.
So to the railway they went, and as soon as they started for the railway
they saw where the garden had hidden itself. It was right behind the
stables, and it had a high wall all round.
“Oh, never mind about the garden now!” cried Peter. “Mother told me
this morning where it was. It'll keep till to-morrow. Let's get to the
railway.”
The way to the railway was all down hill over smooth, short turf with
here and there furze bushes and grey and yellow rocks sticking out like
candied peel from the top of a cake.
The way ended in a steep run and a wooden fence--and there was the
railway with the shining metals and the telegraph wires and posts and
signals.