Page:The railway children (IA railwaychildren00nesb 1).pdf/92

 the warm stone of the bridge and look down at the blue water of the canal. Bobbie had never seen any other canal, except the Regent's canal, and the water of that is not at all a pretty colour. And she had never seen any river at all except the Thames, which also would be all the better if its face were washed.

Perhaps the children would have loved the canal as much as the railway, but for two things. One was that they had found the railway first—on that first, wonderful morning when the house and the country and the moors and rocks and great hills were all new to them. They had not found the canal till some days later. The other reason was that every one on the railway had been kind to them—the Station Master, the Porter, and the old gentleman who waved. And the people on the canal were anything but kind.

The people on the canal were, of course, the bargees who steered the slow barges up and down, or walked beside the old horses that trampled up the mud of the towing-path, and strained at the long tow-ropes.

Peter had once asked one of the bargees the time, and had been told to "get out of that," in a tone so fierce that he did not stop to say anything