In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"I would have tried if I liked it, anyhow," said Dhunni shamelessly. And that night, while her grandfather slept in the red-hot furnace to avoid the dullness of dawn, the moon found something else on the wide waste of sand, beside the crematorium and the regulation barrier, to yield her the tribute of a shadow. It was Dhunni on all fours seeking high and low for the chunk of chocolate, and when she found it she sat up with it in her little brown paws and nibbled away at it for all the world like a squirrel. The result of which experiment being that she smiled brilliantly at every train from that time forth, perhaps in hopes of more chocolate, perhaps from gratitude for past chocolate, perhaps because she really was beginning to be more sensible.

"It is being born to her in lavish manner," said old Dhunnu boastfully to an emissary of the future mother-in-law, who came as far as the village to inquire of the future bride's growth and health. "Go, tell them she gives 'line clear' as well as I do, but that she is not yet of an age for the married state."

In his heart of hearts, however, he knew very well that the time could not be far distant when he could no longer delay parting with the girl, who was fast shooting up into a tall slip of a thing. And then what should he do, for the fever fiend had a fast grip on him now--a firmer hold than he had upon life. Sometimes for days and days he could scarcely creep to the gate when the mail train passed, while, as for the "goods" and "mixed," these low-caste trains he left entirely to Dhunni's mercy; and safely, since the desire for the danger signal seemed to have passed with the possession of responsibility--and chocolate!

Thus Dhunni, far from the eyes of the world, which would have sent her remorselessly into the slavery of mother-in-law, grew tall and slender, and even in her old dust-coloured skirt and bodice caused Craddock the engine-driver, as he sped by, an occasional pang of regret as he remembered another tall girl with velvety eyes.

So time passed until, as luck would have it, a wedding-party from the village where the future mother-in-law resided chose to try a short cut over the desert, and actually crossed the line at level crossing Number 57. The result being that Dhunni's readiness for the married state became known, and a fortnight or so afterwards she sat looking at the new suit of clothes and some jewels which had been sent to her, with an intimation that the bridal procession would come for her in a week's time.

The presents were poor enough in themselves, but then Dhunni had never seen anything so bright before; except, of course, the red flag. And though the little round mirror set in the bridal thumb-ring does not allow of much being seen at a time, Dhunni saw enough to make her eyes still more velvety, her smile still more bewitching.

"Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain," grumbled her grandfather in equivalent Hindu, but it had no effect on the girl. All that day she went about with an odd half-dazed look on her face, and when the women who had brought the presents left in the afternoon, she went and sat down by the gate, feeling vaguely that it was some one else and not the old Dhunnu who was sitting there. The mail train had passed an hour before, and the "goods" was not due till midnight, so there was no chance of anything to interrupt the level monotony she knew so well, and yet, as she sat leaning against the gate-post with the green flag beside her, she was waiting for something; for what she did not know. But the certainty that life held something new was thrilling to her very finger tips.

It was a yellow sunset, full of light and peace. Then out of it came suddenly a faint roll, as of distant thunder. She was on her feet in an instant, listening, waiting. Ah! this was new, certainly. This she had never seen before. An engine with a single carriage coming full speed out of the golden west. Was she to give "line clear" to this? or----

The sound of a girl's laugh rang out into the light, and a scarlet veil, deftly twisted round a bâton, hung clear into the line.

"What in the world's the matter?" asked an English boy, as Craddock and the Westinghouse brake combined brought the final quiver to the great shining fly-wheel. He was a tall boy, fair-haired, blue-eyed, imperious. The girl had given a little gasp at the look on his face as he had leapt from the still moving train to come towards her, though she now stood looking at him boldly, the improvised signal still in her hand.