The Railway Children
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:--
G. N. and S. R.
34576
Return at once to
White 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, _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 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.
Chapter III. The old gentleman.
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