The Railway Children

by E. Nesbit

  ‘Oh!’ she whispered to the others, ‘whatever shall we do? I forgot to put the labels on any of the things! He won’t know what’s from who. He’ll think it’s all us, and that we’re trying to be grand or charitable or something horrid.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Peter.

  And then they heard the voice of Mr Perks, loud and rather angry.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said; ‘I won’t stand it, and so I tell you straight.’

  ‘But,’ said Mrs Perks, ‘it’s them children you make such a fuss about – the children from the Three Chimneys.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Perks, firmly, ‘not if it was a angel from Heaven. We’ve got on all right all these years and no favours asked. I’m not going to begin these sort of charity goings-on at my time of life, so don’t you think it, Nell.’

  ‘Oh, hush!’ said poor Mrs Perks; ‘Bert, shut your silly tongue, for goodness’ sake. The all three of ’em’s in the wash-house a-listening to every word you speaks.’

  ‘Then I’ll give them something to listen to,’ said the angry Perks; ‘I’ve spoke my mind to them afore now, and I’ll do it again,’ he added, and he took two strides to the wash-house door, and flung it wide open – as wide, that is, as it would go, with the tightly packed children behind it.

  ‘Come out,’ said Perks, ‘come out and tell me what you mean by it. ’Ave I ever complained to you of being short as you comes this charity lay over me?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Phyllis, ‘I thought you’d be so pleased; I’ll never try to be kind to anyone else as long as I live. No, I won’t, not never.’

  She burst into tears.

  ‘We didn’t mean any harm,’ said Peter.

  ‘It ain’t what you means so much as what you does,’ said Perks.

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ cried Bobbie, trying hard to be braver than Phyllis, and to find more words than Peter had done for explaining it. ‘We thought you’d love it. We always have things on our birthdays.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Perks, ‘your own relations; that’s different.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Bobbie answered. ‘Not our own relations. All the servants always gave us things at home, and us to them when it was their birthdays. And when it was mine, and Mother gave me the brooch like a buttercup, Mrs Viney gave me two lovely glass pots, and nobody thought she was coming the charity lay over us.’

  ‘If it had been glass pots here,’ said Perks, ‘I wouldn’t ha’ said so much. It’s there being all this heaps and heaps of things I can’t stand. No – nor won’t neither.’

  ‘But they’re not all from us –’ said Peter, ‘only we forgot to put the labels on. They’re from all sorts of people in the village.’

  ‘Who put ’em up to it, I’d like to know?’ asked Perks.

  ‘Why, we did,’ said Phyllis.

  Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with what Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy despair.

  ‘So you’ve been round telling the neighbours we can’t make both ends meet? Well, now you’ve disgraced us as deep as you can in the neighbourhood, you can just take the whole bag of tricks back where it came from. Very much obliged, I’m sure. I don’t doubt but what you meant it kind, but I’d rather not be acquainted with you any longer if it’s all the same to you.’ He deliberately turned the chair round so that his back was turned to the children. The legs of the chair grated on the brick floor, and that was the only sound that broke the silence.

  Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.

  ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘this is most awful.’

  ‘That’s what I says,’ said Perks, not turning round.

  ‘Look here,’ said Bobbie, desperately, ‘we’ll go if you like – and you needn’t be friends with us any more if you don’t want, but –’

  ‘We shall always be friends with you, however nasty you are to us,’ sniffed Phyllis, wildly.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Peter, in a fierce aside.

  ‘But before we go,’ Bobbie went on desperately, ‘do let us show you the labels we wrote to put on the things.’

  ‘I don’t want to see no labels,’ said Perks, ‘except proper luggage ones in my own walk of life. Do you think I’ve kept respectable and outer debt on what I gets, and her having to take in washing, to be give away for a laughing-stock to all the neighbours?’

  ‘Laughing?’ said Peter; ‘you don’t know.’

  ‘You’re a very hasty gentleman,’ whined Phyllis; ‘you know you were wrong once before, about us not telling you the secrets about the Russian. Do let Bobbie tell you about the labels!’

  ‘Well. Go ahead!’ said Perks, grudgingly.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Bobbie, fumbling miserably, yet not without hope, in her tightly-stuffed pocket, ‘we wrote down all the things everybody said when they gave us the things, with the people’s names, because Mother said we ought to be careful – because – but I wrote down what she said – and you’ll see.’

  But Bobbie could not read the labels just at once. She had to swallow once or twice before she could begin.

  Mrs Perks had been crying steadily ever since her husband had opened the wash-house door. Now she caught her breath, choked, and said:

  ‘Don’t you upset yourself, Missy. I know you meant it kind if he doesn’t.’

  ‘May I read the labels?’ said Bobbie, crying on to the slips as she tried to sort them. ‘Mother’s first. It says:

  ‘ “Little Clothes for Mrs Perks’s children.” Mother said, “I’ll find some of Phyllis’s things that she’s grown out of if you’re quite sure 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 the 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 bootlaces. 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 th
ink 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 heart,’ 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.

  10

  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 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? What should I do without you – you and the others? 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 bedtime 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, Mammy – 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 black-and-white, wood-and-plaster house just beyond the bridge. He kept turkeys and guinea fowls, and was a most amiable man. But Peter’s vegetables never had much of a chance, because he liked to use the earth of his garden for digging canals, and making forts and earthworks for his toy soldiers, and the seeds of vegetables rarely come to much in a soil that is constantly disturbed for the purposes of war and irrigation.

  Bobbie planted rose-bushes in her garden, but all the little new leaves of the rose-bushes shrivelled and withered, perhaps because she moved them from the other part of the garden in May, which is not at all the right time of the year for moving roses. But she would not own that they were dead, and hoped on against hope, until the day when Perks came up to see the garden, and told her quite plainly that all her roses were as dead as door nails.