The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  It was a wonderful day—the kind of day that very seldom happens to anybody and to most of us not at all.

  “I did want to talk to the old gentleman about something else,” said Bobbie, “but it was so public—like being in church.”

  “What did you want to say?” asked Phyllis.

  “I’ll tell you when I’ve thought about it more,” said Bobbie.

  So when she had thought a little more she wrote a letter.

  “My dearest old gentleman,” it said; “I want most awfully to ask you something. If you could get out of the train and go by the next, it would do. I do not want you to give me anything. Mother says we ought not to. And besides, we do not want any things. Only to talk to you about a Prisoner and Captive. Your loving little friend,

  “Bobbie.”

  She got the Station Master to give the letter to the old gentleman, and next day she asked Peter and Phyllis to come down to the station with her at the time when the train that brought the old gentleman from town would be passing through.

  She explained her idea to them—and they approved thoroughly.

  They had all washed their hands and faces, and brushed their hair, and were looking as tidy as they knew how. But Phyllis, always unlucky, had upset a jug of lemonade down the front of her dress. There was no time to change—and the wind happening to blow from the coal yard, her frock was soon powdered with grey, which stuck to the sticky lemonade stains and made her look, as Peter said, “like any little gutter child.”

  It was decided that she should keep behind the others as much as possible.

  “Perhaps the old gentleman won’t notice,” said Bobbie. “The aged are often weak in the eyes.”

  There was no sign of weakness, however, in the eyes, or in any other part of the old gentleman, as he stepped from the train and looked up and down the platform.

  The three children, now that it came to the point, suddenly felt that rush of deep shyness which makes your ears red and hot, your hands warm and wet, and the tip of your nose pink and shiny.

  “Oh,” said Phyllis, “my heart’s thumping like a steam-engine—right under my sash, too.”

  “Nonsense,” said Peter, “people’s hearts aren’t under their sashes.”

  “I don’t care—mine is,” said Phyllis.

  “If you’re going to talk like a poetry-book,” said Peter, “my heart’s in my mouth.”

  “My heart’s in my boots—if you come to that,” said Roberta; “but do come on—he’ll think we’re idiots.”

  “He won’t be far wrong,” said Peter, gloomily. And they went forward to meet the old gentleman.

  “Hullo,” he said, shaking hands with them all in turn. “This is a very great pleasure.”

  “It was good of you to get out,” Bobbie said, perspiring and polite.

  He took her arm and drew her into the waiting room where she and the others had played the advertisement game the day they found the Russian. Phyllis and Peter followed. “Well?” said the old gentleman, giving Bobbie’s arm a kind little shake before he let it go. “Well? What is it?”

  “Oh, please!” said Bobbie.

  “Yes?” said the old gentleman.

  “What I mean to say—” said Bobbie.

  “Well?” said the old gentleman.

  “It’s all very nice and kind,” said she.

  “But?” he said.

  “I wish I might say something,” she said.

  “Say it,” said he.

  “Well, then,” said Bobbie—and out came the story of the Russian who had written the beautiful book about poor people, and had been sent to prison and to Siberia for just that.

  “And what we want more than anything in the world is to find his wife and children for him,” said Bobbie, “but we don’t know how. But you must be most horribly clever, or you wouldn’t be a Direction of the Railway. And if you knew how—and would? We’d rather have that than anything else in the world. We’d go without the watches, even, if you could sell them and find his wife with the money.”

  And the others said so, too, though not with so much enthusiasm.

  “Hum,” said the old gentleman, pulling down the white waistcoat that had the big gilt buttons on it, “what did you say the name was—Fryingpansky?”

  “No, no,” said Bobbie earnestly. “I’ll write it down for you. It doesn’t really look at all like that except when you say it. Have you a bit of pencil and the back of an envelope?” she asked.

  The old gentleman got out a gold pencil-case and a beautiful, sweet-smelling, green Russian leather note-book and opened it at a new page.

  “Here,” he said, “write here.”

  She wrote down “Szezcpansky,” and said:—

  “That’s how you write it. You call it Shepansky.”

  The old gentleman took out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and fitted them on his nose. When he had read the name, he looked quite different.

  “That man? Bless my soul!” he said. “Why, I’ve read his book! It’s translated into every European language. A fine book—a noble book. And so your mother took him in—like the good Samaritan. Well, well. I’ll tell you what, youngsters—your mother must be a very good woman.”

  “Of course she is,” said Phyllis, in astonishment.

  “And you’re a very good man,” said Bobbie, very shy, but firmly resolved to be polite.

  “You flatter me,” said the old gentleman, taking off his hat with a flourish. “And now am I to tell you what I think of you?”

  “Oh, please don’t,” said Bobbie, hastily.

  “Why?” asked the old gentleman.

  “I don’t exactly know,” said Bobbie. “Only—if it’s horrid, I don’t want you to; and if it’s nice, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  The old gentleman laughed.

  “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll only just say that I’m very glad you came to me about this—very glad, indeed. And I shouldn’t be surprised if I found out something very soon. I know a great many Russians in London, and every Russian knows his name. Now tell me all about yourselves.”

  He turned to the others, but there was only one other, and that was Peter. Phyllis had disappeared.

  “Tell me all about yourself,” said the old gentleman again. And, quite naturally, Peter was stricken dumb.

  “All right, we’ll have an examination,” said the old gentleman; “you two sit on the table, and I’ll sit on the bench and ask questions.”

  He did, and out came their names and ages—their Father’s name and business—how long they had lived at Three Chimneys and a great deal more.

  The questions were beginning to turn on a herring and a half for three halfpence, and a pound of lead and a pound of feathers, when the door of the waiting room was kicked open by a boot; as the boot entered everyone could see that its lace was coming undone—and in came Phyllis, very slowly and carefully.

  In one hand she carried a large tin can, and in the other a thick slice of bread and butter.

  “Afternoon tea,” she announced proudly, and held the can and the bread and butter out to the old gentleman, who took them and said:—

  “Bless my soul!”

  “Yes,” said Phyllis.

  “It’s very thoughtful of you,” said the old gentleman, “very.”

  “But you might have got a cup,” said Bobbie, “and a plate.”

  “Perks always drinks out of the can,” said Phyllis, flushing red. “I think it was very nice of him to give it me at all—let alone cups and plates,” she added.

  “So do I,” said the old gentleman, and he drank some of the tea and tasted the bread and butter.

  And then it was time for the next train, and he got into it with many good-byes and kind last words.

 
“Well,” said Peter, when they were left on the platform, and the tail-lights of the train disappeared round the corner, “it’s my belief that we’ve lighted a candle today—like Latimer, you know, when he was being burned—and there’ll be fireworks for our Russian before long.”

  And so there were.

  It wasn’t ten days after the interview in the waiting room that the three children were sitting on the top of the biggest rock in the field below their house watching the 5.15 steam away from the station along the bottom of the valley. They saw, too, the few people who had got out at the station straggling up the road towards the village—and they saw one person leave the road and open the gate that led across the fields to Three Chimneys and to nowhere else.

  “Who on earth!” said Peter, scrambling down.

  “Let’s go and see,” said Phyllis.

  So they did. And when they got near enough to see who the person was, they saw it was their old gentleman himself, his brass buttons winking in the afternoon sunshine, and his white waistcoat looking whiter than ever against the green of the field.

  “Hullo!” shouted the children, waving their hands.

  “Hullo!” shouted the old gentleman, waving his hat.

  Then the three started to run—and when they got to him they hardly had breath left to say:—

  “How do you do?”

  “Good news,” said he. “I’ve found your Russian friend’s wife and child—and I couldn’t resist the temptation of giving myself the pleasure of telling him.”

  But as he looked at Bobbie’s face he felt that he could resist that temptation.

  “Here,” he said to her, “you run on and tell him. The other two will show me the way.”

  Bobbie ran. But when she had breathlessly panted out the news to the Russian and Mother sitting in the quiet garden—when Mother’s face had lighted up so beautifully, and she had said half a dozen quick French words to the Exile—Bobbie wished that she had not carried the news. For the Russian sprang up with a cry that made Bobbie’s heart leap and then tremble—a cry of love and longing such as she had never heard. Then he took Mother’s hand and kissed it gently and reverently—and then he sank down in his chair and covered his face with his hands and sobbed. Bobbie crept away. She did not want to see the others just then.

  But she was as gay as anybody when the endless French talking was over, when Peter had torn down to the village for buns and cakes, and the girls had got tea ready and taken it out into the garden.

  The old gentleman was most merry and delightful. He seemed to be able to talk in French and English almost at the same moment, and Mother did nearly as well. It was a delightful time. Mother seemed as if she could not make enough fuss about the old gentleman, and she said yes at once when he asked if he might present some “goodies” to his little friends.

  The word was new to the children—but they guessed that it meant sweets, for the three large pink and green boxes, tied with green ribbon, which he took out of his bag, held unheard-of layers of beautiful chocolates.

  The Russian’s few belongings were packed, and they all saw him off at the station.

  Then Mother turned to the old gentleman and said:—

  “I don’t know how to thank you for everything. It has been a real pleasure to me to see you. But we live very quietly. I am so sorry that I can’t ask you to come and see us again.”

  The children thought this very hard. When they had made a friend—and such a friend—they would dearly have liked him to come and see them again.

  What the old gentleman thought they couldn’t tell. He only said:—

  “I consider myself very fortunate, Madam, to have been received once at your house.”

  “Ah,” said Mother, “I know I must seem surly and ungrateful—but—”

  “You could never seem anything but a most charming and gracious lady,” said the old gentleman, with another of his bows.

  And as they turned to go up the hill, Bobbie saw her Mother’s face.

  “How tired you look, Mammy,” she said; “lean on me.”

  “It’s my place to give Mother my arm,” said Peter. “I’m the head man of the family when Father’s away.”

  Mother took an arm of each.

  “How awfully nice,” said Phyllis, skipping joyfully, “to think of the dear Russian embracing his long-lost wife. The baby must have grown a lot since he saw it.”

  “Yes,” said Mother.

  “I wonder whether Father will think I’ve grown,” Phyllis went on, skipping still more gaily. “I have grown already, haven’t I, Mother?”

  “Yes,” said Mother, “oh, yes,” and Bobbie and Peter felt her hands tighten on their arms.

  “Poor old Mammy, you are tired,” said Peter.

  Bobbie said, “Come on, Phil; I’ll race you to the gate.”

  And she started the race, though she hated doing it. You know why Bobbie did that. Mother only thought that Bobbie was tired of walking slowly. Even Mothers, who love you better than anyone else ever will, don’t always understand.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The amateur firemen

  “That’s a likely little brooch you‘ve got on, Miss,” said Perks the Porter; “I don’t know as ever I see a thing more like a buttercup without it was a buttercup.”

  “Yes,” said Bobbie, glad and flushed by this approval. “I always thought it was more like a buttercup almost than even a real one—and I never thought it would come to be mine, my very own—and then Mother gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “Oh, have you had a birthday?” said Perks; and he seemed quite surprised, as though a birthday were a thing only granted to a favoured few.

  “Yes,” said Bobbie; “when’s your birthday, Mr. Perks?” The children were taking tea with Mr. Perks in the Porters’ room among the lamps and the railway almanacs. They had brought their own cups and some jam turnovers. Mr. Perks made tea in a beer can, as usual, and everyone felt very happy and confidential.

  “My birthday?” said Perks, tipping some more dark brown tea out of the can into Peter’s cup. “I give up keeping of my birthday afore you was born.”

  “But you must have been born sometime, you know,” said Phyllis, thoughtfully, “even if it was twenty years ago—or thirty or sixty or seventy.”

  “Not so long as that, Missie,” Perks grinned as he answered. “If you really want to know, it was thirty-two years ago, come the fifteenth of this month.”

  “Then why don’t you keep it?” asked Phyllis.

  “I’ve got something else to keep besides birthdays,” said Perks, briefly.

  “Oh! What?” asked Phyllis, eagerly. “Not secrets?”

  “No,” said Perks, “the kids and the Missus.”

  It was this talk that set the children thinking, and, presently, talking. Perks was, on the whole, the dearest friend they had made. Not so grand as the Station Master, but more approachable—less powerful than the old gentleman, but more confidential.

  “It seems horrid that nobody keeps his birthday,” said Bobbie. “Couldn’t we do something?”

  “Let’s go up to the Canal bridge and talk it over,” said Peter. “I got a new gut line from the postman this morning. He gave it me for a bunch of roses that I gave him for his sweetheart. She’s ill.”

  “Then I do think you might have given her the roses for nothing,” said Bobbie, indignantly.

  “Nyang, nyang!” said Peter, disagreeably, and put his hands in his pockets.

  “He did, of course,” said Phyllis, in haste; “directly we heard she was ill we got the roses ready and waited by the gate. It was when you were making the brekker-toast. And when he’d said ‘Thank you’ for the roses so many times—much more than he need have—he pulled out the line and gave it to Peter. It wasn’t exchange. It was the gr
ateful heart.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, Peter,” said Bobbie, “I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Peter, grandly, “I knew you would be.”

  So then they all went up to the Canal bridge. The idea was to fish from the bridge, but the line was not quite long enough.

  “Never mind,” said Bobbie. “Let’s just stay here and look at things. Everything’s so beautiful.”

  It was. The sun was setting in red splendour over the grey and purple hills, and the canal lay smooth and shiny in the shadow—no ripple broke its surface. It was like a grey satin ribbon between the dusky green silk of the meadows that were on each side of its banks.

  “It’s all right,” said Peter, “but somehow I can always see how pretty things are much better when I’ve something to do. Let’s get down on to the towpath and fish from there.”

  Phyllis and Bobbie remembered how the boys on the canal-boats had thrown coal at them, and they said so.

  “Oh, nonsense,” said Peter. “There aren’t any boys here now. If there were, I’d fight them.”

  Peter’s sisters were kind enough not to remind him how he had not fought the boys when coal had last been thrown. Instead they said, “All right, then,” and cautiously climbed down the steep bank to the towing-path. The line was carefully baited, and for half an hour they fished patiently and in vain. Not a single nibble came to nourish hope in their hearts.

  All eyes were intent on the sluggish waters that earnestly pretended they had never harboured a single minnow when a loud rough shout made them start.

  “Hi!” said the shout, in most disagreeable tones, “get out of that, can’t you?”

  An old white horse coming along the towing-path was within half a dozen yards of them. They sprang to their feet and hastily climbed up the bank.

  “We’ll slip down again when they’ve gone by,” said Bobbie.

  But, alas, the barge, after the manner of barges, stopped under the bridge.

  “She’s going to anchor,” said Peter; “just our luck!”