Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/55

 guard across the Exeter platform hopefully and expectantly. Right down the platform, on a side line, was a little train that reminded Peter of the Treliss to Truro one, so helpless and incapable did it look. The guard put him and his luggage into a carriage and then left him with a last word as to Salton being his destination. He waited here a very long time and nothing happened. He must have slept again, because when he next looked out of the window the platform was full of people.

He realised with terror that they were, many of them, boys—boys with friends and boys without. He watched them with a great feeling of desolation and homesickness as they flung themselves into carriages and shouted at one another.

A small boy with a very red face and a round fat body, attended by a tall, thin lady in black, got into the carriage, and behaving as if Peter weren't there at all, leaned out of the window.

“All right, mater. That's all right. I'll tell 'em about the socks—old Mother Gill will look after that.”

“You won't forget to send me a post card to-night, Will, dear, will you?”

“No, mater, that's all right. I say, don't you bother to wait if you want to be off.”

“No, dear, I'd like to wait. Don't forget to give father's letter to Mr. Raggett.”

“All right. I say it's rotten for you waiting about, really. Give my love to Floss!”

“Well, perhaps I had better go. This train seems to be late. Good-bye, dearest boy.”

An interval, during which the stout boy leaned out of the window and was embraced. Soon his bowler hat was flung wildly on to the rack and he was leaning out of the window, screaming:

“ocker! I say. Cocker! Cocker! Oh! dash it, he's going in there. Cocker! Cocker! Hullo, Bisket! going strong? Cocker! Oh! there he is! Hullo, old man! Thought I should miss you. Come on in here! Thought I'd never get rid of the mater. They do hang about!”

A small boy with his hat on one side got into the carriage, stepped on Peter's feet without apologising, and then the