Perhaps the old gentleman told the
people at his station to look out for us and wave. He knew we should
like it!"

Now, curiously enough, this was just what had happened. The old
gentleman, who was very well known and respected at his particular
station, had got there early that morning, and he had waited at the door
where the young man stands holding the interesting machine that clips
the tickets, and he had said something to every single passenger who
passed through that door. And after nodding to what the old gentleman
had said--and the nods expressed every shade of surprise, interest,
doubt, cheerful pleasure, and grumpy agreement--each passenger had gone
on to the platform and read one certain part of his newspaper. And when
the passengers got into the train, they had told the other passengers
who were already there what the old gentleman had said, and then the
other passengers had also looked at their newspapers and seemed very
astonished and, mostly, pleased. Then, when the train passed the fence
where the three children were, newspapers and hands and handkerchiefs
were waved madly, till all that side of the train was fluttery with
white like the pictures of the King's Coronation in the biograph at
Maskelyne and Cook's. To the children it almost seemed as though the
train itself was alive, and was at last responding to the love that they
had given it so freely and so long.

"It is most extraordinarily rum!" said Peter.

"Most stronery!" echoed Phyllis.

But Bobbie said, "Don't you think the old gentleman's waves seemed more
significating than usual?"

"No," said the others.

"I do," said Bobbie. "I thought he was trying to explain something to us
with his newspaper."

"Explain what?" asked Peter, not unnaturally.

"_I_ don't know," Bobbie answered, "but I do feel most awfully funny. I
feel just exactly as if something was going to happen."

"What is going to happen," said Peter, "is that Phyllis's stocking is
going to come down."

This was but too true. The suspender had given way in the agitation of
the waves to the 9.15. Bobbie's handkerchief served as first aid to the
injured, and they all went home.

Lessons were more than usually difficult to Bobbie that day. Indeed, she
disgraced herself so deeply over a quite simple sum about the division
of 48 pounds of meat and 36 pounds of bread among 144 hungry children
that Mother looked at her anxiously.

"Don't you feel quite well, dear?" she asked.