ting, made the time seem extremely
long since that strange morning at the beginning of things, when they
had got up so early and burnt the bottom out of the kettle and had apple
pie for breakfast and first seen the Railway.

It was September now, and the turf on the slope to the Railway was dry
and crisp. Little long grass spikes stood up like bits of gold wire,
frail blue harebells trembled on their tough, slender stalks, Gipsy
roses opened wide and flat their lilac-coloured discs, and the golden
stars of St. John's Wort shone at the edges of the pool that lay halfway
to the Railway. Bobbie gathered a generous handful of the flowers and
thought how pretty they would look lying on the green-and-pink blanket
of silk-waste that now covered Jim's poor broken leg.

"Hurry up," said Peter, "or we shall miss the 9.15!"

"I can't hurry more than I am doing," said Phyllis. "Oh, bother it! My
bootlace has come undone AGAIN!"

"When you're married," said Peter, "your bootlace will come undone going
up the church aisle, and your man that you're going to get married to
will tumble over it and smash his nose in on the ornamented pavement;
and then you'll say you won't marry him, and you'll have to be an old
maid."

"I shan't," said Phyllis. "I'd much rather marry a man with his nose
smashed in than not marry anybody."

"It would be horrid to marry a man with a smashed nose, all the same,"
went on Bobbie. "He wouldn't be able to smell the flowers at the
wedding. Wouldn't that be awful!"

"Bother the flowers at the wedding!" cried Peter. "Look! the signal's
down. We must run!"

They ran. And once more they waved their handkerchiefs, without at all
minding whether the handkerchiefs were clean or not, to the 9.15.

"Take our love to Father!" cried Bobbie. And the others, too, shouted:--

"Take our love to Father!"

The old gentleman waved from his first-class carriage window. Quite
violently he waved. And there was nothing odd in that, for he always
had waved. But what was really remarkable was that from every window
handkerchiefs fluttered, newspapers signalled, hands waved wildly. The
train swept by with a rustle and roar, the little pebbles jumped and
danced under it as it passed, and the children were left looking at each
other.

"Well!" said Peter.

"WELL!" said Bobbie.

"_WELL!_" said Phyllis.

"Whatever on earth does that mean?" asked Peter, but he did not expect
any answer.

"_I_ don't know," said Bobbie. "