by E. Nesbit
Peter was pointing, too. And what he was pointing at was a large white sheet nailed against the fence. On the sheet there were thick black letters more than a foot long.
Some of them had run a little, because of Phyllis having put the Brunswick black on too eagerly, but the words were quite easy to read.
And this what the old gentleman and several other people in the train read in the large black letters on the white sheet:—
LOOK OUT AT THE STATION.
A good many people did look out at the station and were disappointed, for they saw nothing unusual. The old gentleman looked out, too, and at first he too saw nothing more unusual than the gravelled platform and the sunshine and the wallflowers and forget-me-nots in the station borders. It was only just as the train was beginning to puff and pull itself together to start again that he saw Phyllis. She was quite out of breath with running.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought I’d missed you. My bootlaces would keep coming down and I fell over them twice. Here, take it.”
She thrust a warm, dampish letter into his hand as the train moved.
He leaned back in his corner and opened the letter. This is what he read:—
“Dear Mr. We do not know your name.
“Mother is ill and the doctor says to give her the things at the end of the letter, but she says she can’t aford it, and to get mutton for us and she will have the broth. We do not know anybody here but you, because Father is away and we do not know the address. Father will pay you, or if he has lost all his money, or anything, Peter will pay you when he is a man. We promise it on our honer. I.O.U. for all the things Mother wants.
“sined Peter.
“Will you give the parsel to the Station Master, because of us not knowing what train you come down by? Say it is for Peter that was sorry about the coals and he will know all right.
“Roberta.
“Phyllis.
“Peter.”
Then came the list of things the Doctor had ordered.
The old gentleman read it through once, and his eyebrows went up. He read it twice and smiled a little. When he had read it thrice, he put it in his pocket and went on reading The Times.
At about six that evening there was a knock at the back door. The three children rushed to open it, and there stood the friendly Porter, who had told them so many interesting things about railways. He dumped down a big hamper on the kitchen flags.
“Old gent,” he said; “he asked me to fetch it up straight away.”
“Thank you very much,” said Peter, and then, as the Porter lingered, he added:—
“I’m most awfully sorry I haven’t got twopence to give you like Father does, but—”
“You drop it if you please,” said the Porter, indignantly. “I wasn’t thinking about no tuppences. I only wanted to say I was sorry your Mamma wasn’t so well, and to ask how she finds herself this evening—and I’ve fetched her along a bit of sweetbrier, very sweet to smell it is. Twopence indeed,” said he, and produced a bunch of sweetbrier from his hat, “just like a conjurer,” as Phyllis remarked afterwards.
“Thank you very much,” said Peter, “and I beg your pardon about the twopence.”
“No offence,” said the Porter, untruly but politely, and went.
Then the children undid the hamper. First there was straw, and then there were fine shavings, and then came all the things they had asked for, and plenty of them, and then a good many things they had not asked for; among others peaches and port wine and two chickens, a cardboard box of big red roses with long stalks, and a tall thin green bottle of lavender water, and three smaller fatter bottles of eau-de-Cologne. There was a letter, too.
“Dear Roberta and Phyllis and Peter,” it said; “here are the things you want. Your mother will want to know where they came from. Tell her they were sent by a friend who heard she was ill. When she is well again you must tell her all about it, of course. And if she says you ought not to have asked for the things, tell her that I say you were quite right, and that I hope she will forgive me for taking the liberty of allowing myself a very great pleasure.”
The letter was signed G. P. something that the children couldn’t read.
“I think we were right,” said Phyllis.
“Right? Of course we were right,” said Bobbie.
“All the same,” said Peter, with his hands in his pockets, “I don’t exactly look forward to telling Mother the whole truth about it.”
“We’re not to do it till she’s well,” said Bobbie, “and when she’s well we shall be so happy we shan’t mind a little fuss like that. Oh, just look at the roses! I must take them up to her.”
“And the sweetbrier,” said Phyllis, sniffing it loudly; “don’t forget the sweetbrier.”
“As if I should!” said Roberta. “Mother told me the other day there was a thick hedge of it at her mother’s house when she was a little girl.”
CHAPTER IV
The engine-burglar
What was left of the second sheet and the Brunswick black came in very nicely to make a banner bearing the legend—
SHE IS NEARLY WELL THANK YOU
and this was displayed to the Green Dragon about a fortnight after the arrival of the wonderful hamper. The old gentleman saw it, and waved a cheerful response from the train. And when this had been done the children saw that now was the time when they must tell Mother what they had done when she was ill. And it did not seem nearly so easy as they had thought it would be. But it had to be done. And it was done. Mother was extremely angry. She was seldom angry, and now she was angrier than they had ever known her. This was horrible. But it was much worse when she suddenly began to cry. Crying is catching, I believe, like measles and whooping-cough. At any rate, everyone at once found itself taking part in a crying-party.
Mother stopped first. She dried her eyes and then she said:—
“I’m sorry I was so angry, darlings, because I know you didn’t understand.”
“We didn’t mean to be naughty, Mammy,” sobbed Bobbie, and Peter and Phyllis sniffed.
“Now, listen,” said Mother; “it’s quite true that we’re poor, but we have enough to live on. You mustn’t go telling everyone about our affairs—it’s not right. And you must never, never, never ask strangers to give you things. Now always remember that—won’t you?”
They all hugged her and rubbed their damp cheeks against hers and promised that they would.
“And I’ll write a letter to your old gentleman, and I shall tell him that I didn’t approve—oh, of course I shall thank him, too, for his kindness. It’s you I don’t approve of, my darlings, not the old gentleman. He was as kind as ever he could be. And you can give the letter to the Station Master to give him—and we won’t say any more about it.”
Afterwards, when the children were alone, Bobbie said:—
“Isn’t Mother splendid? You catch any other grown-up saying they were sorry they had been angry.”
“Yes,” said Peter, “she is splendid; but it’s rather awful when she’s angry.”
“She’s like Avenging and Bright in the song,” said Phyllis. “I should like to look at her if it wasn’t so awful. She looks so beautiful when she’s really downright furious.”
They took the letter down to the Station Master.
“I thought you said you hadn’t got any friends except in London,” said he.
“We’ve made him since,” said Peter.
“But he doesn’t live hereabouts?”
“No—we just know him on the railway.”
Then the Station Master retired to that sacred inner temple behind the little window where the tickets are sold, and the children went down to the Porters’ room and talked to the Porter. They learned several interesting things from him—among others that his na
me was Perks, that he was married and had three children, that the lamps in front of engines are called head-lights and the ones at the back tail-lights.
“And that just shows,” whispered Phyllis, “that trains really are dragons in disguise, with proper heads and tails.”
It was on this day that the children first noticed that all engines are not alike.
“Alike?” said the Porter, whose name was Perks, “lor, love you, no, Miss. No more alike nor what you an’ me are. That little ’un without a tender as went by just now all on her own, that was a tank, that was—she’s off to do some shunting t’other side o’ Maidbridge. That’s as it might be you, Miss. Then there’s goods engines, great, strong things with three wheels each side—joined with rods to strengthen ’em—as it might be me. Then there’s main-line engines as it might be this ’ere young gentleman when he grows up and wins all the races at ’is school—so he will. The main-line engine she’s built for speed as well as power. That’s one to the 9.15 up.”
“The Green Dragon,” said Phyllis.
“We calls her the Snail, Miss, among ourselves,” said the Porter. “She’s oftener be’ind’and nor any train on the line.”
“But the engine’s green,” said Phyllis.
“Yes, Miss,” said Perks, “so’s a snail some seasons o’ the year.”
The children agreed as they went home to dinner that the Porter was most delightful company.
Next day was Roberta’s birthday. In the afternoon she was politely but firmly requested to get out of the way and keep there till tea-time.
“You aren’t to see what we’re going to do till it’s done; it’s a glorious surprise,” said Phyllis.
And Roberta went out into the garden all alone. She tried to be grateful, but she felt she would much rather have helped in whatever it was than have to spend her birthday afternoon by herself, no matter how glorious the surprise might be.
Now that she was alone, she had time to think, and one of the things she thought of most was what mother had said in one of those feverish nights when her hands were so hot and her eyes so bright.
The words were: “Oh, what a doctor’s bill there’ll be for this!”
She walked round and round the garden among the rose-bushes that hadn’t any roses yet, only buds, and the lilac bushes and syringas and American currants, and the more she thought of the doctor’s bill, the less she liked the thought of it.
And presently she made up her mind. She went out through the side door of the garden and climbed up the steep field to where the road runs along by the canal. She walked along until she came to the bridge that crosses the canal and leads to the village, and here she waited. It was very pleasant in the sunshine to lean one’s elbows on the warm stone of the bridge and look down at the blue water of the canal. Bobbie had never seen any other canal, except the Regent’s Canal, and the water of that is not at all a pretty colour. And she had never seen any river at all except the Thames, which also would be all the better if its face was washed.
Perhaps the children would have loved the canal as much as the railway, but for two things. One was that they had found the railway first—on that first, wonderful morning when the house and the country and the moors and rocks and great hills were all new to them. They had not found the canal till some days later. The other reason was that everyone on the railway had been kind to them—the Station Master, the Porter, and the old gentleman who waved. And the people on the canal were anything but kind.
The people on the canal were, of course, the bargees, who steered the slow barges up and down, or walked beside the old horses that trampled up the mud of the towing-path, and strained at the long tow-ropes.
Peter had once asked one of the bargees the time, and had been told to “get out of that,” in a tone so fierce that he did not stop to say anything about his having just as much right on the towing-path as the man himself. Indeed, he did not even think of saying it till some time later.
Then another day when the children thought they would like to fish in the canal, a boy in a barge threw lumps of coal at them, and one of these hit Phyllis on the back of the neck. She was just stooping down to tie up her bootlace—and though the coal hardly hurt at all it made her not care very much about going on fishing.
On the bridge, however, Roberta felt quite safe, because she could look down on the canal, and if any boy showed signs of meaning to throw coal, she could duck behind the parapet.
Presently there was a sound of wheels, which was just what she expected.
The wheels were the wheels of the Doctor’s dogcart, and in the cart, of course, was the Doctor.
He pulled up, and called out:—
“Hullo, head nurse! Want a lift?”
“I wanted to see you,” said Bobbie.
“Your mother’s not worse, I hope?” said the Doctor.
“No—but—”
“Well, skip in, then, and we’ll go for a drive.”
Roberta climbed in and the brown horse was made to turn round—which it did not like at all, for it was looking forward to its tea—I mean its oats.
“This is jolly,” said Bobbie, as the dogcart flew along the road by the canal.
“We could throw a stone down any one of your three chimneys,” said the Doctor, as they passed the house.
“Yes,” said Bobbie, “but you’d have to be a jolly good shot.”
“How do you know I’m not?” said the Doctor. “Now, then, what’s the trouble?”
Bobbie fidgeted with the hook of the driving apron.
“Come, out with it,” said the Doctor.
“It’s rather hard, you see,” said Bobbie, “to out with it; because of what Mother said.”
“What did Mother say?”
“She said I wasn’t to go telling everyone that we’re poor. But you aren’t everyone, are you?”
“Not at all,” said the Doctor, cheerfully. “Well?”
“Well, I know doctors are very extravagant—I mean expensive, and Mrs. Viney told me that her doctoring only cost her twopence a week because she belonged to a Club.”
“Yes?”
“You see she told me what a good doctor you were, and I asked her how she could afford you, because she’s much poorer than we are. I’ve been in her house and I know. And then she told me about the Club, and I thought I’d ask you—and—oh, I don’t want Mother to be worried! Can’t we be in the Club, too, the same as Mrs. Viney?”
The Doctor was silent. He was rather poor himself, and he had been pleased at getting a new family to attend. So I think his feelings at that minute were rather mixed.
“You aren’t cross with me, are you?” said Bobbie, in a very small voice.
The Doctor roused himself.
“Cross? How could I be? You’re a very sensible little woman. Now look here, don’t you worry. I’ll make it all right with your Mother, even if I have to make a special brand-new Club all for her. Look here, this is where the Aqueduct begins.”
“What’s an Aque—what’s its name?” asked Bobbie.
“A water bridge,” said the Doctor. “Look.”
The road rose to a bridge over the canal. To the left was a steep rocky cliff with trees and shrubs growing in the cracks of the rock. And the canal here left off running along the top of the hill and started to run on a bridge of its own—a great bridge with tall arches that went right across the valley.
Bobbie drew a long breath.
“It is grand, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s like pictures in the History of Rome.”
“Right!” said the Doctor, “that’s just exactly what it is like. The Romans were dead nuts on aqueducts. It’s a splendid piece of engineering.”
“I thought engineering was making engines.”
“Ah, there are different
sorts of engineering—making road and bridges and tunnels is one kind. And making fortifications is another. Well, we must be turning back. And, remember, you aren’t to worry about doctor’s bills or you’ll be ill yourself, and then I’ll send you in a bill as long as the aqueduct.”
When Bobbie had parted from the Doctor at the top of the field that ran down from the road to Three Chimneys, she could not feel that she had done wrong. She knew that Mother would perhaps think differently. But Bobbie felt that for once she was the one who was right, and she scrambled down the rocky slope with a really happy feeling.
Phyllis and Peter met her at the back door. They were unnaturally clean and neat, and Phyllis had a red bow in her hair. There was only just time for Bobbie to make herself tidy and tie up her hair with a blue bow before a little bell rang.
“There!” said Phyllis, “that’s to show the surprise is ready. Now you wait till the bell rings again and then you may come into the dining-room.”
So Bobbie waited.
“Tinkle, tinkle,” said the little bell, and Bobbie went into the dining-room, feeling rather shy. Directly she opened the door she found herself, as it seemed, in a new world of light and flowers and singing. Mother and Peter and Phyllis were standing in a row at the end of the table. The shutters were shut and there were twelve candles on the table, one for each of Roberta’s years. The table was covered with a sort of pattern of flowers, and at Roberta’s place was a thick wreath of forget-me-nots and several most interesting little packages. And Mother and Phyllis and Peter were singing—to the first part of the tune of St. Patrick’s Day. Roberta knew that Mother had written the words on purpose for her birthday. It was a little way of Mother’s on birthdays. It had begun on Bobbie’s fourth birthday when Phyllis was a baby. Bobbie remembered learning the verses to say to Father ‘for a surprise.’ She wondered if Mother had remembered, too. The four-year-old verse had been:—
Daddy dear, I’m only four
And I’d rather not be more.