"Whose fault was it?"
"The pointsman's, they say. He was half asleep when the accident occurred--the lazy scamp!"
"The pointsman!" exclaimed Felix. "That's Mr. Podmore!"
"I don't know his name, I'm sure," the man replied--it was a passenger who had answered Felix's questions--"but whatever it is, he ought to be made an example of, and I hope he will be."
A man employed at the station, who had heard the last question, said, as he passed, "Yes, it's Podmore's doing, this time."
Felix's first anxiety was for Lily, but he could not see her. He made his way into the waiting-room, and saw, in the centre of a little group, a child lying as if dead in the lap of a weeping woman. He darted forward.
"Good God!" he cried, as he leant over the sad couple. "It's little Polly!"
The weeping woman looked up into his face, and recognised him through her fast-flowing tears.
"She won't want any more dolls," she sobbed, with a gasp between each word. "My Polly! my darling! she's dead! she's dead! O Polly, my blessed, why was not I killed too!"
The piteous words cut Felix's heart and made it bleed. He laid his hand commiseratingly upon Mrs. Podmore's shoulder.