MISS BIRD HEARS ALL ABOUT IT
The twins were meeting a train, but the train was late. They walked up and down the platform, by the side of which the station-master's arabis and aubrietia, primroses and daffodils, were making a fine show. It was the Thursday before Easter, which Miss Bird was coming to spend at Kencote, Miss Phipp having already departed for a week in lovely Lucerne; and the twins, out of the innumerable trains they had met, had never met one with greater pleasure. They had spent an arduous term with Miss Phipp, with whom they had established relations amicable on the whole, but not marked by the affection they had felt for Miss Bird; and although they had rather liked working hard, they had had enough of it for the present, and enough of Miss Phipp.
"I wish the train would hurry up. I do want to see the sweet old lamb," said Joan. "Let's ask Mr. Belper when it's coming."
The station-master, jovially respectful, told them that she was signalled, and they wouldn't have long to wait.
"But I think you ought to see that your trains are up to time," said Nancy. "Didn't you learn at school that punctuality was a virtue?"
"Ah! I see you want to have one of your jokes with me, miss," said the station-master. "I don't know what it's about, but, bless you, have your laugh. I like to see young ladies enjoying themselves."
"Thank you very much," said Joan. "But there's nothing to laugh at in a train being always unpunctual. We want very much to see Miss Bird, who is coming, and you keep her on the line somewhere between here and Ganton. You ought to turn over a new leaf, and see that people don't get disappointed like that."
"Well, it isn't my fault, miss, and here she comes," said Mr. Belper, snatching up a metal instrument in shape something between a sceptre and a door-scraper and hurrying up the platform, as the engine fussed up the last incline and snorted itself to rest.
Miss Bird—diminutive, excited, voluble—cast herself out of her carriage and into the arms of the twins, who gave vent to their affection in a series of embraces that left her breathless and crumpled, but blissfully happy. "That will do Joan 'n' Nancy for the present," she said. "Let me get my things out and then we can have a nice long talk. Oh dear to find myself at Kencote again it is almost too good to be true the umbrella on the rack porter and the hat-box my precious pets how you have grown a brown box with 'E.B.' in the van and that is all. How do you do Mr. Belper you see I have come back again once more like a bad penny as they say and how is Mrs. Clinton darlings and your father and all I have such a lot to hear that I'm sure we shall never leave off talking until I go away again."
"Precious lamb!" said Joan tenderly. "You won't leave off talking, and I could listen to you for ever, like the brook. You're such a relief after Pipp."