reat Railway
Company--had been at work on it, and about it, and they had changed a
pretty field of meadow-land, a garden and an orchard, into a
desolate-looking place, indeed. There was no depot or engine-house in
the immediate neighbourhood, but the railway itself came so close to it,
and rose so high above it, that the engine-driver might almost have
looked down the cottage chimney as he passed.

Just beyond the town of Singleton, the highway was crossed by the
railway, and, in one of the acute angles which the intersection made,
the little house stood. On the side of the house, most distant from the
crossing, were two bridges (one on the railway and the other on the high
road), both so high and so strong as to seem quite out of place over the
tiny stream that, for the greater part of the year, ran beneath them.
It was a large stream at some seasons, however, and so was the Single
River into which it fell; and the water from the Single sometimes set
back under the bridges and over the low land till the house seemed to
stand on an island. The Single River could not be seen from the house,
although it was so near, because the railway hid it, and all else in
that direction, except the summit of a distant mountain, behind which,
at midsummer-time, the sun went down. From the other side, the road was
seen, and a broken field, over which a new street or two had been laid
out, and a few dull-looking houses built; and to the right of these
streets lay the town.

It was not a pretty place, but it had its advantages. It was a far
better home to which to bring country-bred children than any which could
have been found within their means in the town. They could not hesitate
between it and the others which they went to see; and, as Mr Oswald had
something to do with the Railway Company, into whose hands it had
fallen, it was easily secured. There were no neighbours very near, and
there was a bit of garden-ground--the three-cornered piece between the
house and the crossing, and a strip of grass, and a hedge of willows and
alders on the other side, on the edge of the little stream between the
two bridges, and there was no comparison between the house and any of
the high and narrow brick tenements with doors opening right upon the
dusty street.

And so the mother and the children came to make a new home there, and
they succeeded. It was a happy home. Not in quite the same way that
their home in Gourlay had been happy. No