The Railway Children

When he had seen Mother, he said it was influenza.

‘Now, Lady Grave-airs,’ he said in the hall to Bobbie, ‘I suppose you’ll want to be head-nurse.’

‘Of course,’ said she.

‘Well, then, I’ll send down some medicine. Keep up a good fire. Have some strong beef tea made ready to give her as soon as the fever goes down. She can have grapes now, and beef essence – and soda-water and milk, and you’d better get in a bottle of brandy. The best brandy. Cheap brandy is worse than poison.’

She asked him to write it all down, and he did.

When Bobbie showed Mother the list he had written, Mother laughed. It was a laugh, Bobbie decided, though it was rather cold and feeble.

‘Nonsense,’ said Mother, lying in bed with eyes as bright as beads. ‘I can’t afford all that rubbish. Tell Mrs Viney to boil two pounds of scrag-end of the neck for your dinners tomorrow, and I can have some of the broth. Yes, I should like some more water now, love. And will you get a basin and sponge my hands?’

Roberta obeyed. When she had done everything she could to make Mother less uncomfortable, she went down to the others. Her cheeks were very red, her lips set tight, and her eyes shone as bright as Mother’s.

She told them what the Doctor had said, and what Mother had said.

‘And now,’ said she, when she had told all, ‘there’s no one but us to do anything, and we’ve got to do it. I’ve got the shilling for the mutton.’

‘We can do without the beastly mutton,’ said Peter; ‘bread and butter will support life. People have lived on less on desert islands many a time.’

‘Of course,’ said his sister. And Mrs Viney was sent to the village to get as much brandy and soda-water and beef tea as she could buy for a shilling.

‘But even if we never have anything to eat at all,’ said Phyllis, ‘you can’t get all those other things with our dinner money.’

‘No,’ said Bobbie, frowning, ‘we must find out some other way. Now think, everybody, just as hard as ever you can.’

They did think. And presently they talked. And later, when Bobbie had gone up to sit with Mother in case she wanted anything, the other two were very busy with scissors and a white sheet, and a paint brush, and the pot of Brunswick black that Mrs Viney used for grates and fenders. They did not manage to do what they wished, exactly, with the first sheet, so they took another out of the linen cupboard. It did not occur to them that they were spoiling good sheets which cost good money. They only knew that they were making a good – but what they were making comes later.

Bobbie’s bed had been moved into Mother’s room, and several times in the night she got up to mend the fire, and to give her mother milk and soda-water. Mother talked to herself a good deal, but it did not seem to mean anything. And once she woke up suddenly and called out: ‘Mamma, mamma!’ and Bobbie knew she was calling for Granny, and that she had forgotten that it was no use calling, because Granny was dead.

In the early morning Bobbie heard her name and jumped out of bed and ran to Mother’s bedside.

‘Oh – ah – yes – I think I was asleep,’ said Mother. ‘My poor little duck, how tired you’ll be – I do hate to give you all this trouble.’

‘Trouble!’ said Bobbie.

‘Ah, don’t cry, sweet,’ Mother said; ‘I shall be all right in a day or two.’

And Bobbie said, ‘Yes,’ and tried to smile.

When you are used to ten hours of solid sleep, to get up three or four times in your sleep-time makes you feel as though you had been up all night. Bobbie felt quite stupid and her eyes were sore and stiff, but she tidied the room, and arranged everything neatly before the Doctor came.

This was at half past eight.

‘Everything going on all right, little Nurse?’ he said at the front door. ‘Did you get the brandy?’

‘I’ve got the brandy,’ said Bobbie, ‘in a little flat bottle.’

‘I didn’t see the grapes or the beef tea, though,’ said he.

‘No,’ said Bobbie, firmly, ‘but you will tomorrow. And there’s some beef stewing in the oven for beef tea.’

‘Who told you to do that?’ he asked.

‘I noticed what Mother did when Phil had mumps.’

‘Right,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now you get your old woman to sit with your mother, and then you eat a good breakfast, and go straight to bed and sleep till dinner-time. We can’t afford to have the head-nurse ill.’

He was really quite a nice doctor.

When the 9.15 came out of the tunnel that morning the old gentleman in the first-class carriage put down his newspaper, and got ready to wave his hand to the three children on the fence. But this morning there were not three. There was only one. And that was Peter.

Peter was not on the railings either, as usual. He was standing in front of them in an attitude like that of a showman showing off the animals in a menagerie, or of the kind clergyman when he points with a wand at the ‘Scenes from Palestine,’ when there is a magic-lantern and he is explaining it.

Peter was pointing, too. And what he was pointing at was a large white sheet nailed against the fence. On the sheet there were thick black letters more than a foot long.

Some of them had run a little, because of Phyllis having put the Brunswick black on too eagerly, but the words were quite easy to read.

And this was what the old gentleman and several other people in the train read in the large black letters on the white sheet:

A good many people did look out at the station and were disappointed, for they saw nothing unusual. The old gentleman looked out, too, and at first he too saw nothing more unusual than the gravelled platform and the sunshine and the wall-flowers and forget-me-nots in the station borders. It was only just as the train was beginning to puff and pull itself together to start again that he saw Phyllis. She was quite out of breath with running.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought I’d missed you. My bootlaces would keep coming down, and I fell over them twice. Here, take it.’

She threw a warm, dampish letter into his hand as the train moved.

He leaned back in his corner and opened the letter. This is what he read:

Dear Mr We do not know your name.

Mother is ill and the doctor says to give her the things at the end of the letter, but she says she can’t afford it and to get mutton for us and she will have the broth. We do not know anybody here but you, because Father is away and we do not know the address. Father will pay you, or if he has lost all his money, or anything, Peter will pay you when he is a man. We promise it on our honer. I.O.U. for all the things Mother wants

sined Peter

Will you give the parsel to the Station Master, because of us not knowing what train you come down by? Say it is for Peter that was sorry about the coals and he will know all right.

Roberta

Phyllis

Peter

Then came the list of things the Doctor had ordered.

The old gentleman read it through once, and his eyebrows went up. He read it twice and smiled a little. When he had read it twice, he put it in his pocket and went on reading The Times.

At about six that evening there was a knock at the back door. The three children rushed to open it, and there stood the friendly Porter, who had told them so many interesting things about railways. He dumped down a big hamper on the kitchen flags.