“Well,” said Peter, when they were left on the platform, and the tail-lights of the train disappeared round the corner, “it's my belief that we've lighted a candle to-day—like Latimer, you know, when he was being burned—and there'll be fireworks for our Russian before long.”
And so there were.
It wasn't ten days after the interview in the waiting room that the three children were sitting on the top of the biggest rock in the field below their house watching the 5.15 steam away from the station along the bottom of the valley. They saw, too, the few people who had got out at the station straggling up the road towards the village—and they saw one person leave the road and open the gate that led across the fields to Three Chimneys and to nowhere else.
“Who on earth!” said Peter, scrambling down.
“Let's go and see,” said Phyllis.
So they did. And when they got near enough to see who the person was, they saw it was their old gentleman himself, his brass buttons winking in the afternoon sunshine, and his white waistcoat looking whiter than ever against the green of the field.
“Hullo!” shouted the children, waving their hands.
“Hullo!” shouted the old gentleman, waving his hat.
Then the three started to run—and when they got to him they hardly had breath left to say:—
“How do you do?”