第4章 The beginning of things(4)

The house was like a furniture warehouse.I think the children enjoyed it very much.Mother was very busy, but not too busy now to talk to them, and read to them, and even to make a bit of poetry for Phyllis to cheer her up when she fell down with a screwdriver and ran it into her hand.

"Aren't you going to pack this, Mother?" Roberta asked, pointing to the beautiful cabinet inlaid with red turtleshell and brass.

"We can't take everything," said Mother.

"But we seem to be taking all the ugly things," said Roberta.

"We're taking the useful ones," said Mother; "we've got to play at being Poor for a bit, my chickabiddy."When all the ugly useful things had been packed up and taken away in a van by men in green-baize aprons, the two girls and Mother and Aunt Emma slept in the two spare rooms where the furniture was all pretty.All their beds had gone.A bed was made up for Peter on the drawing-room sofa.

"I say, this is larks," he said, wriggling joyously, as Mother tucked him up."I do like moving! I wish we moved once a month."Mother laughed.

"I don't!" she said."Good night, Peterkin."As she turned away Roberta saw her face.She never forgot it.

"Oh, Mother," she whispered all to herself as she got into bed, "how brave you are! How I love you! Fancy being brave enough to laugh when you're feeling like THAT!"Next day boxes were filled, and boxes and more boxes; and then late in the afternoon a cab came to take them to the station.

Aunt Emma saw them off.They felt that THEY were seeing HER off, and they were glad of it.

"But, oh, those poor little foreign children that she's going to governess!" whispered Phyllis."I wouldn't be them for anything!"At first they enjoyed looking out of the window, but when it grew dusk they grew sleepier and sleepier, and no one knew how long they had been in the train when they were roused by Mother's shaking them gently and saying:--"Wake up, dears.We're there."

They woke up, cold and melancholy, and stood shivering on the draughty platform while the baggage was taken out of the train.

Then the engine, puffing and blowing, set to work again, and dragged the train away.The children watched the tail-lights of the guard's van disappear into the darkness.

This was the first train the children saw on that railway which was in time to become so very dear to them.They did not guess then how they would grow to love the railway, and how soon it would become the centre of their new life, nor what wonders and changes it would bring to them.They only shivered and sneezed and hoped the walk to the new house would not be long.Peter's nose was colder than he ever remembered it to have been before.Roberta's hat was crooked, and the elastic seemed tighter than usual.Phyllis's shoe-laces had come undone.

"Come," said Mother, "we've got to walk.There aren't any cabs here."The walk was dark and muddy.The children stumbled a little on the rough road, and once Phyllis absently fell into a puddle, and was picked up damp and unhappy.There were no gas-lamps on the road, and the road was uphill.The cart went at a foot's pace, and they followed the gritty crunch of its wheels.As their eyes got used to the darkness, they could see the mound of boxes swaying dimly in front of them.

A long gate had to be opened for the cart to pass through, and after that the road seemed to go across fields--and now it went down hill.

Presently a great dark lumpish thing showed over to the right.

"There's the house," said Mother."I wonder why she's shut the shutters.""Who's SHE?" asked Roberta.

"The woman I engaged to clean the place, and put the furniture straight and get supper."There was a low wall, and trees inside.

"That's the garden," said Mother.

"It looks more like a dripping-pan full of black cabbages," said Peter.

The cart went on along by the garden wall, and round to the back of the house, and here it clattered into a cobble-stoned yard and stopped at the back door.

There was no light in any of the windows.

Everyone hammered at the door, but no one came.

The man who drove the cart said he expected Mrs.Viney had gone home.

"You see your train was that late," said he.

"But she's got the key," said Mother."What are we to do?""Oh, she'll have left that under the doorstep," said the cart man;"folks do hereabouts." He took the lantern off his cart and stooped.

"Ay, here it is, right enough," he said.

He unlocked the door and went in and set his lantern on the table.

"Got e'er a candle?" said he.

"I don't know where anything is." Mother spoke rather less cheerfully than usual.

He struck a match.There was a candle on the table, and he lighted it.By its thin little glimmer the children saw a large bare kitchen with a stone floor.There were no curtains, no hearth-rug.

The kitchen table from home stood in the middle of the room.The chairs were in one corner, and the pots, pans, brooms, and crockery in another.There was no fire, and the black grate showed cold, dead ashes.

As the cart man turned to go out after he had brought in the boxes, there was a rustling, scampering sound that seemed to come from inside the walls of the house.

"Oh, what's that?" cried the girls.

"It's only the rats," said the cart man.And he went away and shut the door, and the sudden draught of it blew out the candle.

"Oh, dear," said Phyllis, "I wish we hadn't come!" and she knocked a chair over.

"ONLY the rats!" said Peter, in the dark.