The Railway Children, E. Nesbit [ebook reader below 3000 .TXT] 📗

place today.”

There was a short, unpleasant pause. Then:⁠—

“You are a nasty man, though, aren’t you?” said Phyllis.

Peter took a step forward and knocked the man’s hand up, so that the shillings leapt out of it and rolled on the floor.

“If anything could make me sneak, that would!” he said. “Come, Phil,” and marched out of the signal-box with flaming cheeks.

Phyllis hesitated. Then she took the hand, still held out stupidly, that the shillings had been in.

“I forgive you,” she said, “even if Peter doesn’t. You’re not in your proper senses, or you’d never have done that. I know want of sleep sends people mad. Mother told me. I hope your little boy will soon be better, and⁠—”

“Come on, Phil,” cried Peter, eagerly.

“I give you my sacred honour-word we’ll never tell anyone. Kiss and be friends,” said Phyllis, feeling how noble it was of her to try to make up a quarrel in which she was not to blame.

The signalman stooped and kissed her.

“I do believe I’m a bit off my head, Sissy,” he said. “Now run along home to Mother. I didn’t mean to put you about⁠—there.”

So Phil left the hot signal-box and followed Peter across the fields to the farm.

When the farm men, led by Peter and Phyllis and carrying a hurdle covered with horse-cloths, reached the manhole in the tunnel, Bobbie was fast asleep and so was Jim. Worn out with the pain, the Doctor said afterwards.

“Where does he live?” the bailiff from the farm asked, when Jim had been lifted on to the hurdle.

“In Northumberland,” answered Bobbie.

“I’m at school at Maidbridge,” said Jim. “I suppose I’ve got to get back there, somehow.”

“Seems to me the Doctor ought to have a look in first,” said the bailiff.

“Oh, bring him up to our house,” said Bobbie. “It’s only a little way by the road. I’m sure Mother would say we ought to.”

“Will your Ma like you bringing home strangers with broken legs?”

“She took the poor Russian home herself,” said Bobbie. “I know she’d say we ought.”

“All right,” said the bailiff, “you ought to know what your Ma ’ud like. I wouldn’t take it upon me to fetch him up to our place without I asked the Missus first, and they call me the Master, too.”

“Are you sure your Mother won’t mind?” whispered Jim.

“Certain,” said Bobbie.

“Then we’re to take him up to Three Chimneys?” said the bailiff.

“Of course,” said Peter.

“Then my lad shall nip up to Doctor’s on his bike, and tell him to come down there. Now, lads, lift him quiet and steady. One, two, three!”

Thus it happened that Mother, writing away for dear life at a story about a Duchess, a designing villain, a secret passage, and a missing will, dropped her pen as her workroom door burst open, and turned to see Bobbie hatless and red with running.

“Oh, Mother,” she cried, “do come down. We found a hound in a red jersey in the tunnel, and he’s broken his leg and they’re bringing him home.”

“They ought to take him to the vet,” said Mother, with a worried frown; “I really can’t have a lame dog here.”

“He’s not a dog, really⁠—he’s a boy,” said Bobbie, between laughing and choking.

“Then he ought to be taken home to his mother.”

“His mother’s dead,” said Bobbie, “and his father’s in Northumberland. Oh, Mother, you will be nice to him? I told him I was sure you’d want us to bring him home. You always want to help everybody.”

Mother smiled, but she sighed, too. It is nice that your children should believe you willing to open house and heart to any and everyone who needs help. But it is rather embarrassing sometimes, too, when they act on their belief.

“Oh, well,” said Mother, “we must make the best of it.”

When Jim was carried in, dreadfully white and with set lips whose red had faded to a horrid bluey violet colour, Mother said:⁠—

“I am glad you brought him here. Now, Jim, let’s get you comfortable in bed before the Doctor comes!”

And Jim, looking at her kind eyes, felt a little, warm, comforting flush of new courage.

“It’ll hurt rather, won’t it?” he said. “I don’t mean to be a coward. You won’t think I’m a coward if I faint again, will you? I really and truly don’t do it on purpose. And I do hate to give you all this trouble.”

“Don’t you worry,” said Mother; “it’s you that have the trouble, you poor dear⁠—not us.”

And she kissed him just as if he had been Peter. “We love to have you here⁠—don’t we, Bobbie?”

“Yes,” said Bobbie⁠—and she saw by her Mother’s face how right she had been to bring home the wounded hound in the red jersey.

XIII The Hound’s Grandfather

Mother did not get back to her writing all that day, for the red-jerseyed hound whom the children had brought to Three Chimneys had to be put to bed. And then the Doctor came, and hurt him most horribly. Mother was with him all through it, and that made it a little better than it would have been, but “bad was the best,” as Mrs. Viney said.

The children sat in the parlour downstairs and heard the sound of the Doctor’s boots going backwards and forwards over the bedroom floor. And once or twice there was a groan.

“It’s horrible,” said Bobbie. “Oh, I wish Dr. Forrest would make haste. Oh, poor Jim!”

“It is horrible,” said Peter, “but it’s very exciting. I wish doctors weren’t so stuck-up about who they’ll have in the room when they’re doing things. I should most awfully like to see a leg set. I believe the bones crunch like anything.”

“Don’t!” said the two girls at once.

“Rubbish!” said Peter. “How are you going to be Red Cross Nurses, like you were talking of coming home, if you can’t even stand hearing me say about bones crunching? You’d have to hear them crunch on the field of battle⁠—and be steeped in gore up to the elbows as likely as not, and⁠—”

“Stop it!” cried