"Aw, Peter, will 'em du it?"
"Bain't hardly likely," said Peter dolefully.
"Be t'other train going to run into we?"
Peter admitted that it was so, adding: "I told ye to bide to home."
"Will us get hurt?" moaned Mary.
"Smashed to bits. They newspapers will tell us was cut to pieces," said Peter, in his gloomiest fashion. "How much have ye got in the money-box?" he asked.
With prophetic insight Peter perceived that he would be spared. Mary would be destroyed, together with all the other passengers, and Peter naturally was anxious to know the amount of hard cash he was likely to inherit.
But Mary gave no heed to the avaricious question. She groaned and rubbed her eyes with the umbrella. It was the umbrella she was thinking of rather than herself. Somehow she could not imagine her own body mangled upon the line; but a melancholy picture of the wrecked umbrella was clear before her eyes.
In the next compartment the farmer was still singing hymns, accompanied by a chorus. Mary thought they were praying. This was travelling, enjoying life, a day's pleasure, St. Goose's Day! Mary wished with all her heart she had never left her geese and her hut-circle. In the meantime Peter was keeping her well informed.
"They be running the train off on Dartmoor," he explained. "There's a gurt cleave down under, and they be going to run us down that. Us mun get smashed either way."