Perhaps she might contrive to see a little behind it, by pulling it aside. Yes—there!—she could reach it, at any rate. But to pull it aside was quite another matter. Its texture was prohibitive. Fancy a strip of cocoanut matting, with an uncompromising selvage, wrapped round a box of its own width, with its free end under the box! Then compare the rigidity of beadwork and cocoanut matting. The position was hopeless. It was quite beyond her strength to reach it down, and she would have been afraid to do so in the most favourable circumstances imaginable.
Quite hopeless! But there was one thing she might satisfy herself of—the relative sizes of her own hand and the case. Yes—by just standing on the secure steel fender to gain the requisite four inches, she could lay her two hands over the top, length for length, and the finger-tips would not meet, any more than hers met Phoebe's when their frock-cuffs were flush with the edge of her father's old model, all those years and years ago. Because her mind was striving to discredit the authenticity of this one.
Slowly and cautiously, for rheumatism had its say in the matter, she got a safe foothold on the fender and her hands up to the top, measuring. See there! Exactly as she had foretold—half the size! She knew she could not be mistaken about the frock-cuffs, and so far from the finger-tips meeting, with the two middle fingers bickering a little about their rights, there was an overlap as far as the second joint. The hands had grown a little since those days, no doubt, but not to that extent. She tried them both ways to make sure, left on right, and right on left, lest she should be deceiving herself. She was quite unnerved with self-mistrust, but so taken up with avoiding a mismeasurement now, that she could not sift that question of the hands' growth.
Probably everyone has detected outrageous errors in his own answers to his own question:—How old was I when this, that, or the other happened?—errors always in the direction of exaggeration of age. The idea in old Maisie's mind, that she and Phoebe were at least grown girls, was an utter delusion. Mere six-year-olds at the best! The two hands, that she remembered, were the hands of babies, and the incident had happened over seventy years ago.
CHAPTER IX
A QUIET RAILWAY-STATION. ONE PASSENGER, AND A SHAKEDOWN AT MOORE'S. THE CONVICT DAVERILL'S SEARCH FOR HIS MOTHER. GRANNY MARRABLE'S READING OF "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." A MAN ON A STILE. SOME MEMORIES OF NORFOLK ISLAND. A FINGER-JOINT. AN OATH ADMINISTERED BY AN AMATEUR, WITHOUT A TESTAMENT. HOW DAVERILL SPOKE HIS NAME TWICE, AND THE FIRST TIME UNDID THE SECOND. OFF THROUGH A HEDGE, FOLLOWED BY A RESPECTABLE MAN. HOW OLD PHOEBE FOUND AN ENIGMA IN HER POCKET
In those days the great main lines of railway were liable to long silences in the night. At the smaller stations particularly, after the last train up and the last train down had passed without killing somebody at a level crossing, or leaving you behind because you thought it was sure to be late, and presumed upon that certainty, an almost holy calm would reign for hours, and those really ill-used things, the sleepers, seemed to have a chance at last. For after being baffled all day by intermittent rushing fiends, and unwarrantable shuntings to and fro, and droppings of sudden red-hot clinkers on their counterpanes, an inexplicable click or two—apparently due to fidgety bull's-eyes desirous of change—could scarcely be accounted a disturbance.
No station in the world was more primevally still than Grantley Thorpe, after the down three-thirty express—the train that crossed the three-fifteen that carried Gwen to London—had stopped, that the word of Bradshaw should be fulfilled; had deposited the smallest conceivable number of passengers, and wondered, perhaps, why remaindermen in the carriages always put their heads out to ask what station this was. On this particular occasion, Bradshaw scored, for the down train entered the station three minutes after the up train departed, twelve minutes behind. Then the little station turned off lights, locked up doors of offices and lids of boxes, and went to bed. All but a signalman, in a box on a pole.
There was one passenger, not a prepossessing one, who seemed morose. His only luggage was a small handbag, and that was against him. It is not an indictable offence to have no luggage, but if a referendum were taken from railway-porters, it would be. However, this man was, after all, a third-class passenger, so perhaps he was excusable for carrying that bag.