The Railway Children
writing, but leaning her head on her arms and her arms on the table. I
think it was rather good of Bobbie to slip quietly away, saying over and
over, “She doesn't want me to know she's unhappy, and I won't know; I
won't know.” But it made a sad end to the birthday.
* * * * * *
The very next morning Bobbie began to watch her opportunity to get
Peter's engine mended secretly. And the opportunity came the very next
afternoon.
Mother went by train to the nearest town to do shopping. When she went
there, she always went to the Post-office. Perhaps to post her letters
to Father, for she never gave them to the children or Mrs. Viney to
post, and she never went to the village herself. Peter and Phyllis went
with her. Bobbie wanted an excuse not to go, but try as she would she
couldn't think of a good one. And just when she felt that all was lost,
her frock caught on a big nail by the kitchen door and there was a great
criss-cross tear all along the front of the skirt. I assure you this was
really an accident. So the others pitied her and went without her,
for there was no time for her to change, because they were rather late
already and had to hurry to the station to catch the train.
When they had gone, Bobbie put on her everyday frock, and went down to
the railway. She did not go into the station, but she went along the
line to the end of the platform where the engine is when the down train
is alongside the platform--the place where there are a water tank and
a long, limp, leather hose, like an elephant's trunk. She hid behind a
bush on the other side of the railway. She had the toy engine done up in
brown paper, and she waited patiently with it under her arm.
Then when the next train came in and stopped, Bobbie went across the
metals of the up-line and stood beside the engine. She had never been so
close to an engine before. It looked much larger and harder than she
had expected, and it made her feel very small indeed, and, somehow, very
soft--as if she could very, very easily be hurt rather badly.
“I know what silk-worms feel like now,” said Bobbie to herself.
The engine-driver and fireman did not see her. They were leaning out
on the other side, telling the Porter a tale about a dog and a leg of
mutton.
“If you please,” said Roberta--but the engine was blowing off steam and
no one heard her.
“If you please, Mr. Engineer,” she spoke a little louder, but the Engine
happened to speak at the same moment, and of course Roberta's soft
little voice hadn't a chance.
It seemed to her that the only way would be to climb on to the engine
and pull at their coats. The step was high, but she got her knee on it,
and clambered into the cab; she stumbled and fell on hands and knees on
the base of the great heap of coals that led up to the square opening in
the tender. The engine was not above the weaknesses of its fellows; it
was making a great deal more noise than there was the slightest need
for. And just as Roberta fell on the coals, the engine-driver, who
had turned without seeing her, started the engine, and when Bobbie had
picked herself up, the train was moving--not fast, but much too fast for
her to get off.
All sorts of dreadful thoughts came to her all together in one horrible
flash. There were such things as express trains that went on, she
supposed, for hundreds of miles without stopping. Suppose this should be
one of them? How would she get home again? She had no money to pay for
the return journey.
“And I've no business here. I'm an engine-burglar--that's what I am,”
she thought. “I shouldn't wonder if they could lock me up for this.” And
the train was going faster and faster.
There was something in her throat that made it impossible for her to
speak. She tried twice. The men had their backs to her. They were doing
something to things that looked like taps.
Suddenly she put out her hand and caught hold of the nearest sleeve. The
man turned with a start, and he and Roberta stood for a minute looking
at each other in silence. Then the silence was broken by them both.
The man said, “Here's a bloomin' go!” and Roberta burst into tears.
The other man said he was blooming well blest--or something like it--but
though naturally surprised they were not exactly unkind.
“You're a naughty little gell, that's what you are,” said the fireman,
and the engine-driver said:--
“Daring little piece, I call her,” but they made her sit down on an iron
seat in the cab and told her to stop crying and tell them what she meant
by it.
She did stop, as soon as she could. One thing that helped her was the
thought that Peter would give almost his ears to be in her place--on a
real engine--really going. The children had often wondered whether any
engine-driver could be found noble enough to take them for a ride on an
engine--and now there she was. She dried her eyes and sniffed earnestly.
“Now, then,” said the fireman, “out with it. What do you mean by it,
eh?”
“Oh, please,” sniffed Bobbie.
“Try again,” said the engine-driver, encouragingly.
Bobbie tried again.
“Please, Mr. Engineer,” she said, “I did call out to you from the
line, but you didn't hear me--and I just climbed up to touch you on the
arm--quite gently I meant to do it--and then I fell into the coals--and
I am so sorry if I frightened you. Oh, don't be cross--oh, please
don't!” She sniffed again.
“We ain't so much CROSS,” said the fireman, “as interested like. It
ain't every day a little gell tumbles into our coal bunker outer the
sky, is it, Bill? What did you DO it for--eh?”
“That's the point,” agreed the engine-driver; “what did you do it FOR?”
Bobbie found that she had not quite stopped crying. The engine-driver
patted her on the back and said: “Here, cheer up, Mate. It ain't so bad
as all that 'ere, I'll be bound.”
“I wanted,” said Bobbie, much cheered to find herself addressed as
'Mate'--“I only wanted to ask you if you'd be so kind as to mend this.”
She picked up the brown-paper parcel from among the coals and undid the
string with hot, red fingers that trembled.
Her feet and legs felt the scorch of the engine fire, but her shoulders
felt the wild chill rush of the air. The engine lurched and shook and
rattled, and as they shot under a bridge the engine seemed to shout in
her ears.
The fireman shovelled on coals.
Bobbie unrolled the brown paper and disclosed the toy engine.
“I thought,” she said wistfully, “that perhaps you'd mend this for
me--because you're an engineer, you know.”
The engine-driver said he was blowed if he wasn't blest.
“I'm blest if I ain't blowed,” remarked the fireman.
But the engine-driver took the little engine and looked at it--and the
fireman ceased for an instant to shovel coal, and looked, too.
“It's like your precious cheek,” said the engine-driver--“whatever made
you think we'd be bothered tinkering penny toys?”
“I didn't mean it for precious cheek,” said Bobbie; “only everybody that
has anything to do with railways is so kind and good, I didn't think
you'd mind. You don't really--do you?” she added, for she had seen a not
unkindly wink pass between the two.
“My trade's driving of an engine, not mending her, especially such a
hout-size in engines as this 'ere,” said Bill. “An' 'ow are we a-goin'
to get you back to your sorrowing friends and relations, and all be
forgiven and forgotten?”
“If you'll put me down next time you stop,” said Bobbie, firmly, though
her heart beat fiercely against her arm as she clasped her hands, “and
lend me the money for a third-class ticket, I'll pay you back--honour
bright. I'm not a confidence trick like in the newspapers--really, I'm
not.”
“You're a little lady, every inch,” said Bill, relenting suddenly
and completely. “We'll see you gets home safe. An' about this
engine--Jim--ain't you got ne'er a pal as can use a soldering iron?
Seems to me that's about all the little bounder wants doing to it.”
“That's what Father said,” Bobbie explained eagerly. “What's that for?”
She pointed to a little brass wheel that he had turned as he spoke.
“That's the injector.”
“In--what?”
“Injector to fill up the boiler.”
“Oh,” said Bobbie, mentally registering the fact to tell the others;
“that IS interesting.”
“This 'ere's the automatic brake,” Bill went on, flattered by her
enthusiasm. “You just move this 'ere little handle--do it with one
finger, you can--and the train jolly soon stops. That's what they call
the Power of Science in the newspapers.”
He showed her two little dials, like clock faces, and told her how one
showed how much steam was going, and the other showed if the brake was
working properly.
By the time she had seen him shut off steam with a big shining steel
handle, Bobbie knew more about the inside working of an engine than she
had ever thought there was to know, and Jim had promised that his second
cousin's wife's brother should solder the toy engine, or Jim would know
the reason why. Besides all the knowledge she had gained Bobbie felt
that she and Bill and Jim were now friends for life, and that they had
wholly and forever forgiven her for stumbling uninvited among the sacred
coals of their tender.
At Stacklepoole Junction she parted from them with warm expressions of
mutual regard. They handed her over to the guard of a returning train--a
friend of theirs--and she had the joy of knowing what guards do in their
secret fastnesses, and understood how, when you pull the communication
cord in railway carriages, a wheel goes round under the guard's nose and
a loud bell rings in his ears. She asked the guard why his van smelt
so fishy, and learned that he had to carry a lot of fish every day, and
that the wetness in the hollows of the corrugated floor had all drained
out of boxes full of plaice and cod and mackerel and soles and smelts.
Bobbie got home in time for tea, and she felt as though her mind would
burst with all that had been put into it since she parted from the
others. How she blessed the nail that had torn her frock!
“Where have you been?” asked the others.
“To the station, of course,” said Roberta. But she would not tell a word
of her adventures till the day appointed, when she mysteriously led them
to the station at the hour of the 3.19's transit, and proudly introduced
them to her friends, Bill and Jim. Jim's second cousin's wife's brother
had not been unworthy of the sacred trust reposed in him. The toy engine
was, literally, as good as new.
“Good-bye--oh, good-bye,” said Bobbie, just before the engine screamed
ITS good-bye. “I shall always, always love you--and Jim's second
cousin's wife's brother as well!”
And as the three children went home up the hill, Peter hugging the
engine, now quite its own self again, Bobbie told, with joyous leaps of
the heart, the story of how she had been an Engine-burglar.
Chapter V. Prisoners and captives.
It was one day when Mother had gone to Maidbridge. She had gone alone,
but the children were to go to the station to meet her. And, loving the
station as they did, it was only natural that they should be there a
good hour before there was any chance of Mother's train arriving, even
if the train were punctual, which was most unlikely. No doubt they would
have been just as early, even if it had been a fine day, and all the
delights of woods and fields and rocks and rivers had been open to them.
But it happened to be a very wet day and, for July, very cold. There was
a wild wind that drove flocks of dark purple clouds across the sky “like
herds of dream-elephants,” as Phyllis said. And the rain stung sharply,
so that the way to the station was finished at a run. Then the rain fell
faster and harder, and beat slantwise against the windows of the booking