by E. Nesbit
Four’s the nicest age to be,
Two and two and one and three.
What I love is two and two,
Mother, Peter, Phil, and you.
What you love is one and three,
Mother, Peter, Phil, and me.
Give your little girl a kiss
Because she learned and told you this.
The song the others were singing now went like this:—
Our darling Roberta,
No sorrow shall hurt her
If we can prevent it
Her whole life long.
Her birthday’s our fete day,
We’ll make it our great day,
And give her our presents
And sing her our song.
May pleasures attend her
And may the Fates send her
The happiest journey
Along her life’s way.
With skies bright above her
And dear ones to love her!
Dear Bob! Many happy
Returns of the day!
When they had finished singing they cried, “Three cheers for our Bobbie!” and gave them very loudly. Bobbie felt exactly as though she were going to cry—you know that odd feeling in the bridge of your nose and the pricking in your eyelids? But before she had time to begin they were all kissing and hugging her.
“Now,” said Mother, “look at your presents.”
They were very nice presents. There was a green and red needle-book that Phyllis had made herself in secret moments. There was a darling little silver brooch of Mother’s shaped like a buttercup, which Bobbie had known and loved for years, but which she had never, never thought would come to be her very own. There was also a pair of blue glass vases from Mrs. Viney. Roberta had seen and admired them in the village shop. And there were three birthday cards with pretty pictures and wishes.
Mother fitted the forget-me-not crown on Bobbie’s brown head.
“And now look at the table,” she said.
There was a cake on the table covered with white sugar, with ‘Dear Bobbie’ on it in pink sweets, and there were buns and jam; but the nicest thing was that the big table was almost covered with flowers—wallflowers were laid all round the tea-tray—there was a ring of forget-me-nots round each plate. The cake had a wreath of white lilac round it, and in the middle was something that looked like a pattern all done with single blooms of lilac or wallflower or laburnum.
“It’s a map—a map of the railway!” cried Peter. “Look—those lilac lines are the metals—and there’s the station done in brown wallflowers. The laburnum is the train, and there are the signal-boxes, and the road up to here—and those fat red daisies are us three waving to the old gentleman—that’s him, the pansy in the laburnum train.”
“And there’s ‘Three Chimneys’ done in the purple primroses,” said Phyllis. “And that little tiny rose-bud is Mother looking out for us when we’re late for tea. Peter invented it all, and we got all the flowers from the station. We thought you’d like it better.”
“That’s my present,” said Peter, suddenly dumping down his adored steam-engine on the table in front of her. Its tender had been lined with fresh white paper, and was full of sweets.
“Oh, Peter!” cried Bobbie, quite overcome by this munificence, “not your own dear little engine that you’re so fond of?”
“Oh, no,” said Peter, very promptly, “not the engine. Only the sweets.”
Bobbie couldn’t help her face changing a little—not so much because she was disappointed at not getting the engine, as because she had thought it so very noble of Peter, and now she felt she had been silly to think it. Also she felt she must have seemed greedy to expect the engine as well as the sweets. So her face changed. Peter saw it. He hesitated a minute; then his face changed, too, and he said: “I mean not all the engine. I’ll let you go halves if you like.”
“You’re a brick,” cried Bobbie; “it’s a splendid present.” She said no more aloud, but to herself she said:—
“That was awfully jolly decent of Peter because I know he didn’t mean to. Well, the broken half shall be my half of the engine, and I’ll get it mended and give it back to Peter for his birthday.”—“Yes, Mother dear, I should like to cut the cake,” she added, and tea began.
It was a delightful birthday. After tea Mother played games with them—any game they liked—and of course their first choice was blindman’s-buff, in the course of which Bobbie’s forget-me-not wreath twisted itself crookedly over one of her ears and stayed there. Then, when it was near bed-time and time to calm down, Mother had a lovely new story to read to them.
“You won’t sit up late working, will you, Mother?” Bobbie asked as they said good night.
And Mother said no, she wouldn’t—she would only just write to Father and then go to bed.
But when Bobbie crept down later to bring up her presents—for she felt she really could not be separated from them all night—Mother was not writing, but leaning her head on her arms and her arms on the table. I think it was rather good of Bobbie to slip quietly away, saying over and over, “She doesn’t want me to know she’s unhappy, and I won’t know; I won’t know.” But it made a sad end to the birthday.
* * * *
The very next morning Bobbie began to watch her opportunity to get Peter’s engine mended secretly. And the opportunity came the very next afternoon.
Mother went by train to the nearest town to do shopping. When she went there, she always went to the Post-office. Perhaps to post her letters to Father, for she never gave them to the children or Mrs. Viney to post, and she never went to the village herself. Peter and Phyllis went with her. Bobbie wanted an excuse not to go, but try as she would she couldn’t think of a good one. And just when she felt that all was lost, her frock caught on a big nail by the kitchen door and there was a great criss-cross tear all along the front of the skirt. I assure you this was really an accident. So the others pitied her and went without her, for there was no time for her to change, because they were rather late already and had to hurry to the station to catch the train.
When they had gone, Bobbie put on her everyday frock, and went down to the railway. She did not go into the station, but she went along the line to the end of the platform where the engine is when the down train is alongside the platform—the place where there are a water tank and a long, limp, leather hose, like an elephant’s trunk. She hid behind a bush on the other side of the railway. She had the toy engine done up in brown paper, and she waited patiently with it under her arm.
Then when the next train came in and stopped, Bobbie went across the metals of the up-line and stood beside the engine. She had never been so close to an engine before. It looked much larger and harder than she had expected, and it made her feel very small indeed, and, somehow, very soft—as if she could very, very easily be hurt rather badly.
“I know what silk-worms feel like now,” said Bobbie to herself.
The engine-driver and fireman did not see her. They were leaning out on the other side, telling the Porter a tale about a dog and a leg of mutton.
“If you please,” said Roberta—but the engine was blowing off steam and no one heard her.
“If you please, Mr. Engineer,” she spoke a little louder, but the Engine happened to speak at the same moment, and of course Roberta’s soft little voice hadn’t a chance.
It seemed to her that the only way would be to climb on to the engine and pull at their coats. The step was high, but she got her knee on it, and clambered into the cab; she stumbled and fell on hands and knees on the base of the great heap of coals that led up to the square opening in the tender. The engine was not above the weaknesses of its fellows; it was making a great deal more noise than there was the slightest need for. And just as Roberta
fell on the coals, the engine-driver, who had turned without seeing her, started the engine, and when Bobbie had picked herself up, the train was moving—not fast, but much too fast for her to get off.
All sorts of dreadful thoughts came to her all together in one horrible flash. There were such things as express trains that went on, she supposed, for hundreds of miles without stopping. Suppose this should be one of them? How would she get home again? She had no money to pay for the return journey.
“And I’ve no business here. I’m an engine-burglar—that’s what I am,” she thought. “I shouldn’t wonder if they could lock me up for this.” And the train was going faster and faster.
There was something in her throat that made it impossible for her to speak. She tried twice. The men had their backs to her. They were doing something to things that looked like taps.
Suddenly she put out her hand and caught hold of the nearest sleeve. The man turned with a start, and he and Roberta stood for a minute looking at each other in silence. Then the silence was broken by them both.
The man said, “Here’s a bloomin’ go!” and Roberta burst into tears.
The other man said he was blooming well blest—or something like it—but though naturally surprised they were not exactly unkind.
“You’re a naughty little gell, that’s what you are,” said the fireman, and the engine-driver said:—
“Daring little piece, I call her,” but they made her sit down on an iron seat in the cab and told her to stop crying and tell them what she meant by it.
She did stop, as soon as she could. One thing that helped her was the thought that Peter would give almost his ears to be in her place—on a real engine—really going. The children had often wondered whether any engine-driver could be found noble enough to take them for a ride on an engine—and now there she was. She dried her eyes and sniffed earnestly.
“Now, then,” said the fireman, “out with it. What do you mean by it, eh?”
“Oh, please,” sniffed Bobbie.
“Try again,” said the engine-driver, encouragingly.
Bobbie tried again.
“Please, Mr. Engineer,” she said, “I did call out to you from the line, but you didn’t hear me—and I just climbed up to touch you on the arm—quite gently I meant to 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, Pet
er 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.
