"Oh, but do take it!" cried Flora. "It cost twopence."
Charlie put out his hand slowly and took the bun; but it tasted heavy to him, as he was not happy. Soon the rest of the party were settled back in their former seats, and the engine steamed on again. And poor Lady Daisy was quite forgotten! One by one the children dropped off to sleep, and only once did little Flora murmur her doll's name in her dreams. At last they came to the end of their journey, and everyone had to bustle out so quickly. Nurse had to carry the sleepy children into the waiting-room whilst the luggage was being got out, and in five minutes the engine gave a puff and a shriek and the train rolled on somewhere else, with Lady Daisy crushed under one of the cushions of a carriage. Nurse had quite forgotten her!
Poor thing, she hardly deserved such a fate! I think we must follow her on her journey, for somebody must look after her. Well, at the next station an old gentleman got into that very carriage, and he sat down at the end by the window and began to curl himself up comfortably in the corner. But somehow something prevented him. He thought the cushion edged up-hill very oddly, and the seat seemed very hard. So he threw off his travelling rug again, in which he had wrapped himself, and stood up to search, thinking it might be crackers or squibs or something horrid. When he pulled up the seat and found poor Lady Daisy he was very angry.
"I'll speak to the guard!" he muttered to himself, while he held the battered, crushed doll at arm's length. "Some wretched child has left this here for I don't know how long, and they never take the trouble to settle the cushions properly, these railway people. Lazy set!"
By which remark he did the hard-working railway people a great injustice, so I am glad there was no one in the carriage to hear.
He threw the doll roughly down on the opposite side, and composed himself once more to rest. When people are angry they are very often unjust. We know—you and I—that it was not the guard's fault nor the porter's fault that poor Lady Daisy disturbed the rest of this grumbling old gentleman. We know that she had only been left in that carriage ten minutes by herself. However, at the next station the guard was called to the door and shown the poor battered doll, and angrily asked why the cushions were not made smooth before the train started on its journey?
The guard said he was sorry for any discomfort the gentleman might have had, but explained that he remembered a party of children had only just got out at the last station, so he was sure they must have left it there. In the meantime he would take "Miss Doll," as he called her, into his own van; and he lifted her up, and picked up the broken arm and all the yellow hair and rolled them into a big bundle, and went off to his part of the train.
"It'll do for my little Polly," thought the guard to himself.
All this while what was Flora doing? Hard-hearted little girl, she was thinking how hungry she was as they rolled along the streets in a cab to their lodgings. When the family were all seated at tea, and Flora was busy with a plateful of bread and jam, Nurse suddenly came into the room looking rather sad, and she whispered something to Flora's mother. Flora heard some of the words. They were, "Break it to her, please, ma'am; I'm afraid."
All at once, like a flash, Flora remembered Lady Daisy. She darted up from her chair, crying out, "Oh, Nurse, where is my doll? I've left her in the train! Oh, Mother, please send to the station and ask them for her! Oh, Mother, how could Nurse forget her? Nurse, Nurse, are you sure you haven't got her? I heard you say you were afraid! I know you've left her behind!" And thus Flora ran on—now accusing Nurse, now mourning the loss of her doll, now asking her mother to send for her—till her mother drew her calmly to herself, and said, "Flora, dear, do not blame Nurse for forgetting your doll when she had a hundred other things to think of. If you forgot her, don't accuse others of it. I am afraid my little girl forgot her Lady Daisy for many hours, too, in the train. Nurse tells me you left your dollie all alone when you got out of the train at B—— Station, and that Charlie and Baby Henry got hold of her, and pulled her very much about, so that she had to put the poor broken thing under the seat lest you should see it, and it would grieve you. She meant to act kindly to you, and it was hardly her fault if, when we got out, she should forget Lady Daisy was still there, since Lady Daisy's own mistress, my little Flora, never missed her at all; was it?"