“Tim, I’ll take a look round and see that the bays are all right.”
“You’ve done that four times already, Bob.”
“Well, I’ll do it five times, Tim. There’s luck, you know, in odd numbers.”
There was a sharpish curve on the line close to the station. While Bob Frog was away the train, being five minutes before its time, came thundering round the curve and rushed alongside the platform.
Bob ran back of course and stood vainly trying to see the people in each carriage as it went past.
“Oh! what a sweet eager face!” exclaimed Tim, gazing after a young girl who had thrust her head out of a first-class carriage.
“Let alone sweet faces, Tim—this way. The third classes are all behind.”
By this time the train had stopped, and great was the commotion as friends and relatives met or said good-bye hurriedly, and bustled into and out of the carriages—commotion which was increased by the cheering of a fresh band of rescued waifs going to new homes in the west, and the hissing of the safety valve which took it into its head at that inconvenient moment to let off superfluous steam. Some of the people rushing about on that platform and jostling each other would have been the better for safety valves! poor Bobby Frog was one of these.
“Not there!” he exclaimed despairingly, as he looked into the last carriage of the train.
“Impossible,” said Tim, “we’ve only missed them; walk back.”