“Ah, why not?” said Sam.
“Nurse doesn’t know about that place, I think,” suggested Gertie.
“Very likely not; but if she’d only gone an’ seen any one as know’d anything about the line, she’d have found it out. However, the parcel’s pretty sure to be somewhere, so I’ll set some inquiries a-foot w’en I goes up to town to-morrow. Good-night, Sam.”
“Good-night, John,” answered the signalman, as he turned off in the direction of his own dwelling, while the engine-driver and his little daughter pursued the footpath that led to their cottage.
Sam Natly’s residence was a very small one, for house-rent was high in that neighbourhood. There were only two rooms in it, but these two bore evidence of being tended by a thrifty housewife; and, truly, when Sam’s delicate, but partially recovered, wife met him at the door that night, and gave him a hearty kiss of welcome, no one with an atom of good taste could have avoided admitting that she was a remarkably pretty, as well as thrifty, little woman.
“You’re late to-night, Sam,” said little Mrs Natly.
“Yes, I’ve had to go to the shed to see John Marrot about a diamond ring.”
“A diamond ring!” exclaimed his wife.
“Yes, a diamond ring.”
Hereupon Sam related all he knew about the matter, and you may be sure the subject was quite sufficient to furnish ground for a very lively and speculative conversation, during the preparation and consumption of as nice a little hot supper, as any hard-worked signalman could desire.