by E. Nesbit
‘Oh, my heavens – what’s o’clock?’
‘Twelve thirteen,’ said Peter, and indeed it was by the white-faced, round-faced clock on the wall of the signal-box.
The man looked at the clock, sprang to the levers, and wrenched them this way and that. An electric bell tingled – the wires and cranks creaked, and the man threw himself into a chair. He was very pale, and the sweat stood on his forehead ‘like large dewdrops on a white cabbage’, as Phyllis remarked later. He was trembling, too; the children could see his big hairy hands shake from side to side, ‘with quite extra-sized trembles’, to use the subsequent words of Peter. He drew long breaths. Then suddenly he cried, ‘Thank God, thank God you come in when you did – oh, thank God!’ and his shoulders began to heave and his face grew red again, and he hid it in those large hairy hands of his.
‘Oh, don’t cry – don’t, said Phyllis, ‘it’s all right now,’ and she patted him on one big, broad shoulder, while Peter conscientiously thumped the other.
But the signalman seemed quite broken down, and the children had to pat him and thump him for quite a long time before he found his handkerchief – a red one with mauve and white horseshoes on it – and mopped his face and spoke. During this patting and thumping interval a train thundered by.
‘I’m downright shamed, that I am,’ were the words of the big signalman when he had stopped crying; ‘snivelling like a kid.’ Then suddenly he seemed to get cross. ‘And what was you doing up here, anyway?’ he said; ‘you know it ain’t allowed.’
‘Yes,’ said Phyllis, ‘we knew it was wrong – but I wasn’t afraid of doing wrong, and it so turned out right. You aren’t sorry we came.’
‘Lor’ love you – if you hadn’t ’a’ come –’ he stopped and then went on. ‘It’s a disgrace, so it is, sleeping on duty. If it was to come to be known – even as it is, when no harm’s come of it.’
‘It won’t come to be known,’ said Peter; ‘we aren’t sneaks. All the same, you oughtn’t to sleep on duty – it’s dangerous.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said the man, ‘but I can’t help it. I know’d well enough just how it ’ud be. But I couldn’t get off. They couldn’t get no one to take on my duty. I tell you I ain’t had ten minutes’ sleep this last five days. My little chap’s ill – pewmonia, the Doctor says – and there’s no one but me and ’is little sister to do for him. That’s where it is. The gell must ’ave her sleep. Dangerous? Yes, I believe you. Now go and split on me if you like.’
‘Of course we won’t,’ said Peter, indignantly, but Phyllis ignored the whole of the signalman’s speech, except the first six words.
‘You asked us,’ she said, ‘to tell you something you don’t know. Well, I will. There’s a boy in the tunnel over there with a red jersey and his leg broken.’
‘What did he want to go into the blooming tunnel for, then?’ said the man.
‘Don’t be so cross,’ said Phyllis, kindly. ‘We haven’t done anything wrong except coming and waking you up and that was right, as it happens.’
Then Peter told how the boy came to be in the tunnel.
‘Well,’ said the man, ‘I don’t see as I can do anything. I can’t leave the box.’
‘You might tell us where to go after someone who isn’t in a box, though,’ said Phyllis.
‘There’s Brigden’s farm over yonder – where you see the smoke a-coming up through the trees,’ said the man, more and more grumpy, as Phyllis noticed.
‘Well, good-bye, then,’ said Peter.
But the man said, ‘Wait a minute.’ He put his hand in his pocket and brought out some money – a lot of pennies and one or two shillings and sixpence and half a crown. He picked out two shillings and held them out.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you this to hold your tongues about what’s taken 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’ll 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, Missie,’ 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 a 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.
‘Certainly,’ 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 the 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 work-room 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 every one 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!’<
br />
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.
13
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 like as not, and –’
‘Stop it!’ cried Bobbie, with a white face; ‘you don’t know how funny you’re making me feel.’
‘Me, too,’ said Phyllis, whose face was pink.
‘Cowards!’ said Peter.
‘I’m not,’ said Bobbie. ‘I helped Mother with your rake-wounded foot, and so did Phil – you know we did.’
‘Well, then!’ said Peter. ‘Now look here. It would be a jolly good thing for you if I were to talk to you every day for half an hour about broken bones and people’s insides, so as to get you used to it.’
A chair was moved above.
‘Listen,’ said Peter, ‘that’s the bone crunching.’
‘I do wish you wouldn’t,’ said Phyllis. ‘Bobbie doesn’t like it.’
‘I’ll tell you what they do,’ said Peter. I can’t think what made him so horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a change. This is called reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself. Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being good at all. ‘I’ll tell you what they do,’ said Peter; ‘they strap the broken man down so that he can’t resist or interfere with their doctorish designs, and then someone holds his head, and someone holds his leg – the broken one, and pulls it till the bones fit in – with a crunch, mind you! Then they strap it up and – let’s play at bone-setting!’
‘Oh, no!’ said Phyllis.
But Bobbie said suddenly: ‘All right – let’s! I’ll be the doctor, and Phil can be the nurse. You can be the broken boner; we can get at your legs more easily, because you don’t wear petticoats.’
‘I’ll get the splints and bandages,’ said Peter; ‘you get the couch of suffering ready.’
The ropes that had tied up the boxes that had come from home were all in a wooden packing-case in the cellar. When Peter brought in a trailing tangle of them, and two boards for splints, Phyllis was excitedly giggling.
‘Now, then,’ he said, and lay down on the settle, groaning most grievously.
‘Not so loud!’ said Bobbie, beginning to wind the rope round him and the settle. ‘You pull, Phil.’
‘Not so tight,’ moaned Peter. ‘You’ll break my other leg.’
Bobbie worked on in silence, winding more and more rope round him.
‘That’s enough,’ said Peter. ‘I can’t move at all. Oh, my poor leg!’ He groaned again.
‘Sure you can’t move?’ asked Bobbie, in a rather strange tone.
‘Quite sure,’ replied Peter. ‘Shall we play it’s bleeding freely or not?’ he asked cheerfully.
‘You can play what you like,’ said Bobbie, sternly, folding her arms and looking down at him where he lay all wound round and round with cord. ‘Phil and I are going away. And we shan’t untie you till you promise never, never to talk to us about blood and wounds unless we say you may. Come, Phil!’
‘You beast!’ said Peter, writhing. ‘I’ll never promise, never. I’ll yell, and Mother will come.’
‘Do,’ said Bobbie, ‘and tell her why we tied you up! Come on, Phil. No, I’m not a beast, Peter. But you wouldn’t stop when we asked you and –’
‘Yah,’ said Peter, ‘it wasn’t even your own idea. You got it out of Stalky!’
Bobbie and Phil, retiring in silent dignity, were met at the door by the Doctor. He came in rubbing his hands and looking pleased with himself.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that job’s done. It’s a nice clean fracture, and it’ll go on all right, I’ve no doubt. Plucky young chap, too – hullo! What’s all this?’
His eye had fallen on Peter who lay mousey-still in his bonds on the settle.
‘Playing at prisoners, eh?’ he said; but his eyebrows had gone up a little. Somehow he had not thought that Bobbie would be playing while in the room above someone was having a broken bone set.
‘Oh, no!’ said Bobbie, ‘not at prisoners. We were playing at setting bones. Peter’s the broken boner, and I was the doctor.’
‘I was the nurse,’ put in Phyllis, cheerfully.
The Doctor frowned.
‘Then I must say,’ he said, and he said it rather sternly, ‘that it’s a very heartless game. Haven’t you enough imagination even to faintly picture what’s been going on upstairs? That poor chap, with drops of sweat on his forehead, and biting his lips so as not to cry out, and every touch on his leg agony and –’
‘You ought to be tied up,’ said Phyllis; ‘you’re as bad as –’
‘Hush,’ said Bobbie; ‘I’m sorry, but we weren’t heartless, really.’
‘I was, I suppose,’ said Peter, crossly. ‘All right, Bobbie, don’t you go on being noble and screening me, because I jolly well won’t have it. It was only that I kept on talking about blood and wounds. I wanted to train them for Red Cross Nurses. And I wouldn’t stop when they asked me.’
‘Well?’ said Dr Forrest, sitting down.
‘Well – then I said, “Let’s play at setting bones.” It was all rot. I knew Bobbie wouldn’t. I only said it to tease her. And then when she said “yes”, of course I had to go through with it. And they tied me up. They got it out of Stalky. And I think it’s a beastly shame.’
He managed to writhe over and hide his face against the wooden back of the settle.
‘I didn’t think that anyone would know but us,’ said Bobbie, indignantly answering Peter’s unspoken reproach. ‘I never thought of your coming in. And hearing about blood and wounds does really make me feel most awfully funny. It was only a joke our tying him up. Let me untie you, Peter.’
‘I don’t care if you never untie me,’ said Peter; ‘and if that’s your idea of a joke –’
‘If I were you,’ said the Doctor, though really he did not quite know what to say, ‘I should be untied before your Mother comes down. You don’t want to worry her just now, do you?’
‘I don’t promise anything about not saying about wounds, mind,’ said Peter, in very surly tones, as Bobbie and Phyllis began to untie the knots.
‘I’m ve
ry sorry, Pete,’ Bobbie whispered, leaning close to him as she fumbled with the big knot under the settle; ‘but if you only knew how sick you made me feel.’
‘You’ve made me feel pretty sick, I can tell you,’ Peter rejoined. Then he shook off the loose cords, and stood up.
‘I looked in,’ said Dr Forrest, ‘to see if one of you would come along to the surgery. There are some things that your Mother will want at once, and I’ve given my man a day off to go and see the circus; will you come, Peter?’
Peter went without a word or a look to his sisters.
The two walked in silence up to the gate that led from the Three Chimneys field to the road. Then Peter said:
‘Let me carry your bag. I say, it is heavy – what’s in it?’
‘Oh, knives and lancets and different instruments for hurting people. And the ether bottle. I had to give him ether, you know – the agony was so intense.’
Peter was silent.
‘Tell me all about how you found that chap,’ said Dr Forrest.
Peter told. And then Dr Forrest told him stories of brave rescues; he was a most interesting man to talk to, as Peter had often remarked.
Then in the surgery Peter had a better chance than he had ever had of examining the Doctor’s balance, and his microscope, and his scales and measuring glasses. When all the things were ready that Peter was to take back, the Doctor said suddenly:
‘You’ll excuse my shoving my oar in, won’t you? But I should like to say something to you.’
‘Now for a rowing,’ thought Peter, who had been wondering how it was that he had escaped one.
‘Something scientific,’ added the Doctor.
‘Yes,’ said Peter, fiddling with the fossil ammonite that the Doctor used for a paper-weight.
‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘you know men have to do the work of the world and not be afraid of anything – so they have to be hardy and brave. But women have to take care of their babies and cuddle them and nurse them and be very patient and gentle.’
