t's almost four now!"

"They'll be left till the six-thirty!"

"Oh, don't alarm yourself! The valley train always waits for the
express."

"It's coming in now!"

"Oh, good, so it is!"

"Late by twenty minutes exactly!"

"Stand back there!" yelled a porter, setting down a box with a slam, and
motioning the excited, fluttering group of girls to a position of
greater safety than the extreme edge of the platform. "Llangarmon
Junction! Change for Glanafon and Graigwen!"

Snorting and puffing, as if in agitated apology for the tardiness of its
arrival, the train came steaming into the station, the drag of its
brakes adding yet another item of noise to the prevailing babel.
Intending passengers clutched bags and baskets; fathers of families gave
a last eye to the luggage; mothers grasped children firmly by the hand;
a distracted youth, seeking vainly for his portmanteau, upset a stack of
bicycles with a crash; while above all the din and turmoil rose the
strident, rasping voice of a book-stall boy, crying his selection of
papers with ear-splitting zeal.

From the windows of the in-coming express waved seventeen agitated
pocket-handkerchiefs, and the signal was answered by a counter-display
of cambric from the twenty girls hustled back by an inspector in the
direction of the weighing-machine.

"There's Helen!"

"And Ruth, surely!"

"Oh! where's Marjorie?"

"There! Can't you see her, with Doris?"

"That's Mamie, waving to me!"

"What's become of Kathleen?"

One moment more, and the neat school hats of the new-comers had swelled
the group of similar school hats already collected on the platform;
ecstatic greetings were exchanged, urgent questions asked and hasty
answers given, and items of choice information poured forth with the
utmost volubility of which the English tongue is capable. Urged by brief
directions from a mistress in charge, the chattering crew surged towards
a siding, and made for a particular corridor carriage marked "Reserved".
Here handbags, umbrellas, wraps, and lunch-baskets were hastily stowed
away in the racks, and, Miss Moseley having assured herself that not a
single lamb of her flock was left behind, the grinning porter slammed
the doors, the green flag waved, and the local train, long overdue,
started with a jerk for the Craigwen Valley.

Past the grey old castle that looked seawards over the estuary, past the
little white town of Llangarmon, with its ancient walls and fortified
ga