The Story of Jessie

by Mabel Quiller-Couch

They kept on telling each other that, to try and prevent themselves from counting on it too much.

"No, I don't see how she can come to-day, but I'll step along to see the train come in; it'll satisfy our minds. We shouldn't feel happy to shut up the house and go to bed if we didn't know for certain."

So Thomas started off with a calm, businesslike air, outwardly, but inside him his heart was beating fast with expectation, and his step grew quicker and quicker as soon as he was out of sight of his own cottage windows.

He slackened his pace a little when he came within sight of the station, for it looked as quiet and sleepy as though no train was expected for ages yet; and the eager, shy old man felt that the men at the station would laugh at him for arriving more than half-an-hour before any train was due. For a moment he decided to turn away and walk in some other direction until some of the time had passed, but the seats on the platform looked very restful, and the platform, bathed in the soft afternoon sunshine, looked wonderfully peaceful and inviting. There was not a sign of life, or a sound or a movement, except that of the little breeze ruffling the young leaves on the chestnuts in the road outside.

"I'll explain to Mr. Simmons that I come early so as to be able to tell him about the little maid, while he'd got a few spare minutes before the train came in," he decided, and, with a sigh of relief, made his way into the station. He was tired after his exciting, busy day, and glad to sit down alone, to think over all that the day had brought them, and was likely to bring them.

Mr. Simmons, the station-master, must have been tired too, though his day had been neither busy nor exciting, for when at last he did appear, he was stretching and yawning as though the nap he had been having in his office had not been quite long enough for him.

When he saw Thomas his eye brightened, and he joined him at once, for he dearly loved a gossip, and he had in his mind a long story that he was impatient to pour out to somebody. The story was so long and so interesting that the whistle of the fast-approaching train was heard long before it was ended, and of his own story Thomas had not been able to tell a word.

"Is that the London train?" he asked eagerly, starting to his feet.

"It is, sir. Are you going by it?"

"No—o, oh no," said Thomas. His face flushed and his hands shook as a carriage door opened here and there and a passenger got out.