“My dear Edith,” said Mr. Delight calmly, “I’ll go and see my friend, the President of the Railroad, and see what can be done.”
“De train will go off and leave you, sah!” cried the distressed porter.
“No it won’t, William!” shouted Mr. Darling. “I’m going to stand right here with my bag, directly on the track, and the engineer won’t dare to run over me.” And Betsey stood Mr. Darling up, right under the nose of the steaming engine.
Soon Mr. Delight came striding back. “It’s all right,” he called. “The President’s Special will be hitched on directly. Here it comes down the track now.”
Betsey had the biggest passenger car behind her all the time. In fact it was the only car all the little people could get into all at once, and now she pushed it down the track at a great rate and bumped it into the train with a bang quite like a real passenger car.
“It is a shame that it will be too late to bathe when we get there,” said Mrs. Delight, as Betsey arranged them all in the tiny green velvet seats.
“It won’t,” corrected Mr. Darling. “Eleven o’clock is the fashionable hour to bathe. The minute I get there I shall put on my bathing-suit. And, Dinah, I shall get enough fish for dinner off the wharf before I touch the water.”
“Better not promise, Mr. John. What if de fishes don’t bite?”
“I promise,” said Mr. Darling more firmly, “that I won’t go into the water until I get enough fish for dinner.”
Here Betsey slowed up the train, and called out in a conductor’s loud voice, “Beachwood! Beachwood!”