And, oh, in what a glorious voice he so directed them!
“My heart! If I could holler goobers like he does them car-trains, folks’d jest have to buy, whether er no!” thought the little peddler, so rapt in listening that she forgot everything else; till, at one louder yell than all, the child in her arms shrieked in terror. At which the gateman whirled round, leaving a space behind him, and Glory darted through.
Neither the official nor she knew that she was doing a prohibited thing; for he supposed she was hurrying to overtake some older party of travelers and she knew nothing of station rules. Once past this gate, she found herself in dangerous nearness to the many trains and could walk neither this way nor that without some guard shouting after her, “Take care, there!”
She dared not put Bonny Angel down even if the child would have consented, and, continually, the rumblings and whistlings grew more confusing. In comparison with this great shed, Elbow Lane, that Miss Bonnicastle had found so noisy, seemed a haven of quietude and Glory heartily wished herself back in it.
There must be a way out of this dreadful place, and the bewildered little girl tried to find it. Yet there behind her rose a high brick wall in which there was no doorway, on the left were the waiting or moving trains and their shouting guards, and on the right that iron fence with its rolling gates and opposing gatemen, and, also, that policeman who would have taken Bonny Angel from her. Before her rose the north-side wall of the building, that, at first glance, seemed as unbroken a barrier as its counterpart on the south; but closer inspection discovered a low, open archway through which men occasionally passed.
“Whatever’s beyond here can’t be no worse,” thought Take-a-Stitch, and hurried through the opening. But once beyond it, she could only exclaim, “Why, Bonny Angel, it’s just the same, all tracks an’ cars, though ’tain’t got no roof over! My, I don’t know how to go–an’ I wish they would keep still a minute an’ let a body think!”
Even older people would have been confused in such a place, with detached engines here and there, snorting and puffing back and forth in a seemingly senseless way, its many tracks, and its wider outdoor resemblance to the great shed she had left.
“Guess this is what Posy Jane ’d call ‘hoppin’ out the fryin’-pan inter the fire,’ Bonny Angel. It’s worse an’ more of it, an’ I want to get quit of it soon’s I can. ’Tain’t no ways likely grandpa’s hereabouts, an’—My, but you’re a hefty little darlin’! If I wasn’t afraid to let you, I’d have ye walk a spell. But you might get runned over by some them ingines what won’t stay still no place an’ I dastn’t, you dear, precious sweetness, you! I shan’t put you down till I drop, ’less we get out o’ this sudden.”
But even as she clasped her beloved burden the closer, Bonny Angel set this decision at naught by kicking herself free from the girl too small and weary to prevent; and once upon the ground, off she set along a particularly shining track, cooing and shrieking her delight at her own mischievousness.
“Oh! oh! oh!” screamed Glory, and started in pursuit. Of course, she could run much faster than her “Guardian,” but that tiny person had a way of darting sidewise, here and there, and thus eluding capture just as it seemed certain.