Page:Australian views of England.djvu/94

  station at Stafford is, I believe, the finest "roadside station" in England, and when I arrived, about eleven o'clock, the spacious platforms, usually all life and commotion, had a strange appearance of quiet and caution. Railway porters were standing at intervals, with lanterns and all the attaches of the station, the clerks from the ticket-office, and the young waitresses from the refreshment-rooms, were looking on in evident expectation of some event, though no one seemed to speak, and everybody looked sad at heart There were not half-a-dozen other persons in the great station: I was only admitted on explaining that I wished to go by the mail train. All at once I recollected that Queen Victoria was to pass through Stafford that night, on her way to her Highland home, and in a minute after the pilot engine, twenty minutes in advance of the royal train, hurried past Still those midnight gazers kept their places, with silent lips and fixed eyes, till at the given time the royal carriages also hurried past. Then all walked silently away.

The train in which the Queen travelled consisted of seven or eight carriages. I should think the speed was about thirty-five miles an hour.