“Ah, then it is right you are if the inspector has had anything to do with it, for he is the most particular man, and as careful of women and children as if they was new-laid eggs!” said Mrs. Smith, and then she bustled about getting a meal for Bertha. The supper at her boarding house was always spread for half-past six o’clock, which, of course, would be too late for Bertha, who, therefore, had to be fed separately.
Having had no food since her early breakfast, Bertha was quite prepared to do justice to Mrs. Smith’s providing, especially as it was exceedingly doubtful when and where she would obtain her next meal. There was time for a brief half-hour of rest after her early supper, but Bertha could not sleep, being too much oppressed by a dread of losing her train. A few minutes before six o’clock she walked across to the depot, and the first person she saw when she arrived was a stout, elderly woman, who promptly pounced upon her much as a hungry cat might spring for a young and tender mouse.
“Now, do say, are you Miss Doyne, the young lady that is going to railhead?” demanded the stout woman, with a blowing sort of gasp intended to relieve her feelings.
“Yes, that is my name, and I am going to railhead. Are you Mrs. Walford?” asked Bertha, smiling at the stout woman with great satisfaction, because she looked so comfortable and motherly a woman.
“That is my name, and I am not so old as I look. It is this dreadful stoutness that is so aging,” said Mrs. Walford, with a second blowing gasp, which reminded Bertha of an engine letting off steam. “Forty-five, I am, and not a week more, for my birthday was the day before yesterday; and, I am sure, to look at, anyone might well take me for sixty. I tell Walford sometimes that I will go in for some of those patent medicines that are advertised for reducing the figure. Then he laughs at me, and offers to swop jobs for a few weeks; for, as he says, a mounted policeman has no use for fat, and certainly he can’t keep it.”
“What a good idea! Why don’t you try it?” asked Bertha, laughing at the fancy picture her mind conjured up of plump Mrs. Walford in a policeman’s uniform, seated upon a frisky horse.
The stout woman laughed too, as if the little joke tickled her, then she answered, in her gasping, jerky fashion, “I would swop jobs with him for a time if it wasn’t for one thing, and that is, I would not dare to mount a horse. My own two legs are shaky, I know; but I do feel safe when I am on them, which is more than I should do if I were mounted on four legs. But though I can’t take his job I can share his life, and now that they are going to have a police barracks at Brocken Ridge, I’m going to live there, to make some sort of a home for him and the other men stationed in that district, and it won’t be my fault if I don’t manage to run off a little of this fat of mine before I have done.”
“I am sure I hope that you will be successful, if it is going to make you more comfortable,” said Bertha, and then she asked, “Do you know if Inspector Grant is coming to the depot before we start?”
“He was coming, but just as we were moving out of the door a message came for him that he was wanted at Ardley Crossing as soon as he could get there, and so he had to go. He told me I was to find you, and I wasn’t to go without you, even if I had to get the freighter kept waiting for half an hour, though I guess there would be a pretty row among the officials if I were to try on any games of that sort,” said Mrs. Walford.
Bertha laughed, and then turned to follow her companion towards the door of a covered freight wagon (box car, as it was called), and of which there were only three in the long train of wagons, laden with railway construction stuff, which had drawn into the Rownton depot.