The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (most important books of all time txt) 📖

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 office and of the chill place that had General Waiting Room on its door.

“It’s like being in a besieged castle,” Phyllis said; “look at the arrows of the foe striking against the battlements!”

“It’s much more like a great garden-squirt,” said Peter.

They decided to wait on the up side, for the down platform looked very wet indeed, and the rain was driving right into the little bleak shelter where down-passengers have to wait for their trains.

The hour would be full of incident and of interest, for there would be two up trains and one down to look at before the one that should bring Mother back.

“Perhaps it’ll have stopped raining by then,” said Bobbie; “anyhow, I’m glad I brought Mother’s waterproof and umbrella.”

They went into the desert spot labelled General Waiting Room, and the time passed pleasantly enough in a game of advertisements. You know the game, of course? It is something like dumb Crambo. The players take it in turns to go out, and then come back and look as like some advertisement as they can, and the others have to guess what advertisement it is meant to be. Bobbie came in and sat down under Mother’s umbrella and made a sharp face, and everyone knew she was the fox who sits under the umbrella in the advertisement. Phyllis tried to make a Magic Carpet of Mother’s waterproof, but it would not stand out stiff and raft-like as a Magic Carpet should, and nobody could guess it. Everyone thought Peter was carrying things a little too far when he blacked his face all over with coal-dust and struck a spidery attitude and said he was the blot that advertises somebody’s Blue Black Writing Fluid.

It was Phyllis’s turn again, and she was trying to look like the Sphinx that advertises What’s-his-name’s Personally Conducted Tours up the Nile when the sharp ting of the signal announced the up train. The children rushed out to see it pass. On its engine were the particular driver and fireman who were now numbered among the children’s dearest friends. Courtesies passed between them. Jim asked after the toy engine, and Bobbie pressed on his acceptance a moist, greasy package of toffee that she had made herself.

Charmed by this attention, the engine-driver consented to consider her request that some day he would take Peter for a ride on the engine.

“Stand back, Mates,” cried the engine-driver, suddenly, “and horf she goes.”

And sure enough, off the train went. The children watched the tail-lights of the train till it disappeared round the curve of the line, and then turned to go back to the dusty freedom of the General Waiting Room and the joys of the advertisement game.

They expected to see just one or two people, the end of the procession of passengers who had given up their tickets and gone away. Instead, the platform round the door of the station had a dark blot round it, and the dark blot was a crowd of people.

“Oh!” cried Peter, with a thrill of joyous excitement, “something’s happened! Come on!”

They ran down the platform. When they got to the crowd, they could, of course, see nothing but the damp backs and elbows of the people on the crowd’s outside. Everybody was talking at once. It was evident that something had happened.

“It’s my belief he’s nothing worse than a natural,” said a farmerish-looking person. Peter saw his red, clean-shaven face as he spoke.

“If you ask me, I should say it was a Police Court case,” said a young man with a black bag.

“Not it; the Infirmary more like—”

Then the voice of the Station Master was heard, firm and official:—

“Now, then—move along there. I’ll attend to this, if YOU please.”

But the crowd did not move. And then came a voice that thrilled the children through and through. For it spoke in a foreign language. And, what is more, it was a language that they had never heard. They had heard French spoken and German. Aunt Emma knew German, and used to sing a song about bedeuten and zeiten and bin and sin. Nor was it Latin. Peter had been in Latin for four terms.

It was some comfort, anyhow, to find that none of the crowd understood the foreign language any better than the children did.

“What’s that he’s saying?” asked the farmer, heavily.

“Sounds like French to me,” said the Station Master, who had once been to Boulogne for the day.

“It isn’t French!” cried Peter.

“What is it, then?” asked more than one voice. The crowd fell back a little to see who had spoken, and Peter pressed forward, so that when the crowd closed up again he was in the front rank.

“I don’t know what it is,” said Peter, “but it isn’t French. I know that.” Then he saw what it was that the crowd had for its centre. It was a man—the man, Peter did not doubt, who had spoken in that strange