Page:The railway children (IA railwaychildren00nesb 1).pdf/312

 said Peter, "and the signalman's little boy is better. He told me so."

"I didn't mean the people," explained Phyllis; "I meant the dear Railway itself."

"The thing I don't like," said Bobbie, on this fourth day, which was a Tuesday, "is our having stopped waving to the 9.15 and sending our love to Father by it."

"Let's begin again to-morrow," said Phyllis. And they did.

Somehow the change of everything that was made by having servants in the house and Mother not doing any writing, made the time seem extremely long since that strange morning at the beginning of things, when they had got up so early and burnt the bottom out of the kettle and had apple pie for breakfast and first seen the Railway.

It was September now, and the turf on the slope to the Railway was dry and crisp. Little long grass spikes stood up like bits of gold wire, frail blue harebells trembled on their tough, slender stalks, Gipsy roses opened wide and flat their lilac-coloured discs, and the golden stars of St. John's Wort shone at the edges of the pool that lay half way to the Railway. Bobbie gathered a generous handful of the flowers and thought how pretty