“You must make a speech now and thank everyone for their kindness,” whispered the Station Master in Peter's ear and pushed him forward. “Begin 'Ladies and Gentlemen,'” he added.
Each of the children had already said “Thank you,” quite properly.
“Oh, dear,” said Peter, but he did not resist the push.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said in a rather husky voice. Then there was a pause, and he heard his heart beating in his throat. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he went on with a rush, “it's most awfully good of you, and we shall treasure the watches all our lives--but really we don't deserve it because what we did wasn't anything, really. At least, I mean it was awfully exciting, and what I mean to say--thank you all very, very much.”
The people clapped Peter more than they had done the District Superintendent, and then everybody shook hands with them, and as soon as politeness would let them, they got away, and tore up the hill to Three Chimneys with their watches in their hands.
It was a wonderful day--the kind of day that very seldom happens to anybody and to most of us not at all.
“I did want to talk to the old gentleman about something else,” said Bobbie, “but it was so public--like being in church.”
“What did you want to say?” asked Phyllis.
“I'll tell you when I've thought about it more,” said Bobbie.
So when she had thought a little more she wrote a letter.
“My dearest old gentleman,” it said; “I want most awfully to ask you something. If you could get out of the train and go by the next, it would do. I do not want you to give me anything. Mother says we ought not to. And besides, we do not want any THINGS. Only to talk to you about a Prisoner and Captive. Your loving little friend,
“Bobbie.”
She got the Station Master to give the letter to the old gentleman, and next day she asked Peter and Phyllis to come down to the station with her at the time when the train that brought the old gentleman from town would be passing through.
She explained her idea to them--and they approved thoroughly.
They had all washed their hands and faces, and brushed their hair, and were looking as tidy as they knew how. But Phyllis, always unlucky, had upset a jug of lemonade down the front of her dress. There was no time to change--and the wind happening to blow from the coal yard, her frock was soon powdered with grey, which stuck to the sticky lemonade stains and made her look, as Peter said, “like any little gutter child.”
It was decided that she should keep behind the others as much as possible.
“Perhaps the old gentleman won't notice,” said Bobbie. “The aged are often weak in the eyes.”
There was no sign of weakness, however, in the eyes, or in any other part of the old gentleman, as he stepped from the train and looked up and down the platform.
The three children, now that it came to the point, suddenly felt that rush of deep shyness which makes your ears red and hot, your hands warm and wet, and the tip of your nose pink and shiny.
“Oh,” said Phyllis, “my heart's thumping like a steam-engine--right under my sash, too.”
“Nonsense,” said Peter, “people's hearts aren't under their sashes.”
“I don't care--mine is,” said Phyllis.
“If you're going to talk like a poetry-book,” said Peter, “my heart's in my mouth.”
“My heart's in my boots--if you come to that,” said Roberta; “but do come on--he'll think we're idiots.”
“He won't be far wrong,” said Peter, gloomily. And they went forward to meet the old gentleman.
“Hullo,” he said, shaking hands with them all in turn. “This is a very great pleasure.”
“It WAS good of you to get out,” Bobbie said, perspiring and polite.
He took her arm and drew her into the waiting room where she and the others had played the advertisement game the day they found the Russian. Phyllis and Peter followed. “Well?” said the old gentleman, giving Bobbie's arm a kind little shake before he let it go. “Well? What is it?”
“Oh, please!” said Bobbie.
“Yes?” said the old gentleman.
“What I mean to say--” said Bobbie.
“Well?” said the old gentleman.
“It's all very nice and kind,” said she.
“But?” he said.
“I wish I might say something,” she said.
“Say it,” said he.
“Well, then,” said Bobbie--and out came the story of the Russian who had written the beautiful book about poor people, and had been sent to prison and to Siberia for just that.
“And what we want more than anything in the world is to find his wife and children for him,” said Bobbie, “but we don't know how. But you must be most horribly clever, or you wouldn't be a Direction of the Railway. And if YOU knew how--and would? We'd rather have that than anything else in the world. We'd go without the watches, even, if you could sell them and find his wife with the money.”
And the others said so, too, though not with so much enthusiasm.
“Hum,” said the old gentleman, pulling down the white waistcoat that had the big gilt buttons on it, “what did you say the name was--Fryingpansky?”
“No, no,” said Bobbie earnestly. “I'll write it down for you. It doesn't really look at all like that except when you say it. Have you a bit of pencil and the back of an envelope?” she asked.
The old gentleman got out a gold pencil-case and a beautiful, sweet-smelling, green Russian leather note-book and opened it at a new page.
“Here,” he said, “write here.”
She wrote down “Szezcpansky,” and said:--
“That's how you write it. You CALL it Shepansky.”
The old gentleman took out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and fitted them on his nose. When he had read the name, he looked quite different.
“THAT man? Bless my soul!” he said. “Why, I've read his book! It's translated into every European language. A fine book--a noble book. And so your mother took him in--like the good Samaritan. Well, well. I'll tell you what, youngsters--your mother must be a very good woman.”
“Of course she is,” said Phyllis, in astonishment.
“And you're a very good man,” said Bobbie, very shy, but firmly resolved to be polite.
“You flatter me,” said the old gentleman, taking off his hat with a flourish. “And now am I to tell you what I think of you?”
“Oh, please don't,” said Bobbie, hastily.
“Why?” asked the old gentleman.
“I don't exactly know,” said Bobbie. “Only--if it's horrid, I don't want you to; and if it's nice, I'd rather you didn't.”
The old gentleman laughed.
“Well, then,” he said, “I'll only just say that I'm very glad you came to me about this--very glad, indeed. And I shouldn't be surprised if I found out something very soon. I know a great many Russians in London, and every Russian knows HIS name. Now tell me all about yourselves.”
He turned to the others, but there was only one other, and that was Peter. Phyllis had disappeared.
“Tell me all about yourself,” said the old gentleman again. And, quite naturally, Peter was stricken dumb.
“All right, we'll have an examination,” said the old gentleman; “you two sit on the table, and I'll sit on the bench and ask questions.”
He did, and out came their names and ages--their Father's name and business--how long they had lived at Three Chimneys and a great deal more.
The questions were beginning to turn on a herring and a half for three halfpence, and a pound of lead and a pound of feathers, when the door of the waiting room was kicked open by a boot; as the boot entered everyone could see that its lace was coming undone--and in came Phyllis, very slowly and carefully.
In one hand she carried a large tin can, and in the other a thick slice of bread and butter.
“Afternoon tea,” she announced proudly, and held the can and the bread and butter out to the old gentleman, who took them and said:--
“Bless my soul!”
“Yes,” said Phyllis.
“It's very thoughtful of you,” said the old gentleman, “very.”
“But you might have got a cup,” said Bobbie, “and a plate.”
“Perks always drinks out of the can,” said Phyllis, flushing red. “I think it was very nice of him to give it me at all--let alone cups and plates,” she added.
“So do I,” said the old gentleman, and he drank some of the tea and tasted the bread and butter.
And then it was time for the next train, and he got into it with many good-byes and kind last words.
“Well,” said Peter, when they were left on the platform, and the tail-lights of the train disappeared round the corner, “it's my belief that we've lighted a candle to-day--like Latimer, you know, when he was being burned--and there'll be fireworks for our Russian before long.”
And so there were.
It wasn't ten days after the interview in the waiting room that the three children were sitting on the top of the biggest rock in the field below their house watching the 5.15 steam away from the station along the bottom of the valley. They saw, too, the few people who had got out at the station straggling up the road towards the village--and they saw one person leave the road and open the gate that led across the fields to Three Chimneys and to nowhere else.
“Who on earth!” said Peter, scrambling down.
“Let's go and see,” said Phyllis.
So they did. And when they got near enough to see who the person was, they saw it was their old gentleman himself, his brass buttons winking in the afternoon sunshine, and his white waistcoat looking whiter than ever against the green of the field.