"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 between us." And he went on across the ca.n.a.l bridge to the village to get the buns, feeling more comfortable in his mind than he had felt since the hand of the Station Master had fastened on his collar that night among the coals.
Next day when they had sent the threefold wave of greeting to Father by the Green Dragon, and the old gentleman had waved back as usual, Peter proudly led the way to the station.
"But ought we?" said Bobbie.
"After the coals, she means," Phyllis explained.
"I met the Station Master yesterday," said Peter, in an offhand way, and he pretended not to hear what Phyllis had said; "he expresspecially invited us to go down any time we liked."
"After the coals?" repeated Phyllis. "Stop a minute--my bootlace is undone again."
"It always IS undone again," said Peter, "and the Station Master was more of a gentleman than you"ll ever be, Phil--throwing coal at a chap"s head like that."
Phyllis did up her bootlace and went on in silence, but her shoulders shook, and presently a fat tear fell off her nose and splashed on the metal of the railway line. Bobbie saw it.
"Why, what"s the matter, darling?" she said, stopping short and putting her arm round the heaving shoulders.
"He called me un-un-ungentlemanly," sobbed Phyllis. "I didn"t never call him unladylike, not even when he tied my Clorinda to the firewood bundle and burned her at the stake for a martyr."
Peter had indeed perpetrated this outrage a year or two before.
"Well, you began, you know," said Bobbie, honestly, "about coals and all that. Don"t you think you"d better both unsay everything since the wave, and let honour be satisfied?"
"I will if Peter will," said Phyllis, sniffling.
"All right," said Peter; "honour is satisfied. Here, use my hankie, Phil, for goodness" sake, if you"ve lost yours as usual. I wonder what you do with them."
"You had my last one," said Phyllis, indignantly, "to tie up the rabbit-hutch door with. But you"re very ungrateful. It"s quite right what it says in the poetry book about sharper than a serpent it is to have a toothless child--but it means ungrateful when it says toothless.
Miss Lowe told me so."
"All right," said Peter, impatiently, "I"m sorry. THERE! Now will you come on?"
They reached the station and spent a joyous two hours with the Porter.
He was a worthy man and seemed never tired of answering the questions that begin with "Why--" which many people in higher ranks of life often seem weary of.
He told them many things that they had not known before--as, for instance, that the things that hook carriages together are called couplings, and that the pipes like great serpents that hang over the couplings are meant to stop the train with.
"If you could get a holt of one o" them when the train is going and pull "em apart," said he, "she"d stop dead off with a jerk."
"Who"s she?" said Phyllis.
"The train, of course," said the Porter. After that the train was never again "It" to the children.
"And you know the thing in the carriages where it says on it, "Five pounds" fine for improper use." If you was to improperly use that, the train "ud stop."
"And if you used it properly?" said Roberta.
"It "ud stop just the same, I suppose," said he, "but it isn"t proper use unless you"re being murdered. There was an old lady once--someone kidded her on it was a refreshment-room bell, and she used it improper, not being in danger of her life, though hungry, and when the train stopped and the guard came along expecting to find someone weltering in their last moments, she says, "Oh, please, Mister, I"ll take a gla.s.s of stout and a bath bun," she says. And the train was seven minutes behind her time as it was."
"What did the guard say to the old lady?"
"_I_ dunno," replied the Porter, "but I lay she didn"t forget it in a hurry, whatever it was."
In such delightful conversation the time went by all too quickly.
The Station Master came out once or twice from that sacred inner temple behind the place where the hole is that they sell you tickets through, and was most jolly with them all.
"Just as if coal had never been discovered," Phyllis whispered to her sister.
He gave them each an orange, and promised to take them up into the signal-box one of these days, when he wasn"t so busy.
Several trains went through the station, and Peter noticed for the first time that engines have numbers on them, like cabs.
"Yes," said the Porter, "I knowed a young gent as used to take down the numbers of every single one he seed; in a green note-book with silver corners it was, owing to his father being very well-to-do in the wholesale stationery."
Peter felt that he could take down numbers, too, even if he was not the son of a wholesale stationer. As he did not happen to have a green leather note-book with silver corners, the Porter gave him a yellow envelope and on it he noted:--
379 663
and felt that this was the beginning of what would be a most interesting collection.
That night at tea he asked Mother if she had a green leather note-book with silver corners. She had not; but when she heard what he wanted it for she gave him a little black one.
"It has a few pages torn out," said she; "but it will hold quite a lot of numbers, and when it"s full I"ll give you another. I"m so glad you like the railway. Only, please, you mustn"t walk on the line."
"Not if we face the way the train"s coming?" asked Peter, after a gloomy pause, in which glances of despair were exchanged.
"No--really not," said Mother.
Then Phyllis said, "Mother, didn"t YOU ever walk on the railway lines when you were little?"
Mother was an honest and honourable Mother, so she had to say, "Yes."