One or two other passengers only were alighting here, although the train was packed with miners going on to Roseneath, where a mining boom was on just now.
Sam Peters touched his cap in recognition, gave her a melancholy smile, and immediately bestowed his attention on her trunk, as if that, after all, were the only thing in life worth living for.
Gertrude was a little surprised, even a trifle resentful in her thoughts, for surely Nell might have come out of the office to greet her, and, quite forgetting her agitation on the subject a few minutes before, she was disposed to regard the want of welcome as a grievance.
Suddenly a girl in a well-cut dark grey skirt, and a pretty blouse with a fluttering red ribbon, came darting out from the office, and seized upon Gertrude with a sort of whirlwind of greeting.
“Oh, my dear, how lovely to see you again! Who is this? At the first glance I thought you had brought Teddy with you, and I was dreadfully disappointed when the second look showed him to be a stranger.”
Was this well-dressed, eager-faced girl really Nell? Gertrude gave a little gasp of amazement as she looked at her; then straightway became heartily ashamed of those grudging thoughts which had tormented her all the way from Lytton to Bratley.
“Dear Nell, how you have altered and improved!” she exclaimed. “No, it isn’t Teddy, but a deputy little brother, borrowed to ward off home-sickness. Is he not a darling? and his name is Sonny Russell.”
Nell wanted to make friends with the child too, but Sonny, in an unwonted fit of shyness, put his face down on Gertrude’s shoulder and was not to be beguiled from there.
At this moment the train began to move on again, the pace quickening with each car that slid past.
“Why, there’s Nell!” exclaimed a fretful, high-pitched voice.