“Bletchley, Bletchley!” shouted Olly, jumping down off the seat.
“No, my boy,” said his father, catching hold of him, “we shall stop five more times before we get to Bletchley; so don’t be impatient.”
But at last came Bletchley, and the children were lifted out into the middle of such a bustle, as it seemed to Milly. There were crowds of people at the station, and they were all pushing backward and forward, and shouting and talking.
“Keep hold of me, Olly,” said Milly, with an anxious little face. “Oh, Nana, don’t let him go!”
But nurse held him fast; and very soon they were through the crowd, and father had put them safe into their new train, into a carriage marked “Windermere,” which would take them all the way to their journey’s end.
“That was like lions and bears, wasn’t it, mother?” said Olly, pointing to the crowd in the station, as they went puffing away. Now, “lions and bears” was a favourite game of the children’s, a romping game, where everybody ran about and pretended to be somebody else, and where the more people played, and the more they ran and pushed and tumbled about, the funnier, it was. And the running, scrambling people at the station did look rather as if they were playing at lions and bears.
And now the children had a long day before them. On rushed the train, past towns and villages, and houses and trains. The sun got hotter and hotter, and the children began to get a little tired of looking out of window. Milly asked for a story-book, and was soon very happy reading “Snow White and Rose Red.” She had read it a hundred times before, but that never mattered a bit. Olly came to sit on nurse’s knee while she showed him pictures, and so the time passed away. And now the train stopped again, and father lifted Olly on his knee to see a great church far away over the houses, and taught him to say “Lichfield Cathedral.” And then came Stafford; and Milly looked out for the castle, and wondered whether the castles in her story-books looked like that, and whether princesses and fairy godmothers and giants ever lived there in old times.
After they had left Stafford, Olly began to get tired and fidgety. First he went to sit on his father’s knee, then on mother’s, then on nurse’s—none of them could keep him still, and nothing seemed to amuse him for long together.
“Come and have a sleep, Master Olly,” said nurse. “You are just tired and hot. This is a long way for little boys, and we’ve got ever so far to go yet.”
“I’m not sleepy, Nana,” said Olly, sitting straight up, with a little flushed face and wide-open eyes. “I’m going to keep awake like father.”