(Mrs. Carter running for train)
LADDIE.
CHAPTER I.
"Third-class forward! Here you are, mum. Plenty of room this way! Now then! that ain't third, that's first. Come, look alive! All right behind there?"
Doors bang; a whistle; and the train moves off.
The guard had thrust into a third-class carriage, already nearly full, a bandbox with a blue spotted handkerchief round it, and a bunch of Michaelmas daisies, southernwood, and rosemary tucked under the knot at the top; a marketing-basket, one flap of which was raised by a rosy-cheeked apple emitting a powerful smell; a bundle done up in a handkerchief of the same pattern as that round the bandbox, only bright yellow; a large cotton umbrella of a pale green color, with a decided waist to it; and a pair of pattens! Anything else? Oh, yes, of course! there was an old woman who belonged to the things; but she was so small and frightened and overwhelmed that she appeared quite a trifle beside her belongings, and might easily have been overlooked altogether. She remained just where the guard had pushed her, standing in the carriage, clutching as many of her things as she could keep hold of, and being jerked by the motion of the train, now against a burly bricklayer, and now against his red-faced wife who sat opposite; while her dazzled, blinking eyes followed the hedges and banks that whirled past, and her breath came with a catch and a gasp every time a bridge crossed the line, as if it were a wave coming over her. Her fellow-travellers watched her, in silence at first, having rather resented her entrance, as the carriage was already sufficiently full; but when a sudden lurch of the train sent her violently forward against a woman, from whom she carromed off against the bricklayer, and flattened her drawn black-satin bonnet out of all shape, the man found his tongue, which was a kind one, though slow in moving.
"Hold hard, missus!" he said; "we don't pay nothing extra for sitting down, so maybe you could stow some of them traps under the seat, and make it kind of more comfortable all round. Here, mother, lend a hand with the old lady's things, can't you? That's my missus, mum, that my better arf, as the saying is, and no chap needn't wish for a better, though I say it as shouldn't."