s, which could not be played by himself. For this and
kindred affairs Vassie and Phoebe were of great use, though Phoebe
cried if she had to be a Roundhead too often out of her turn. Still, she
was a good little thing, but when the fateful date arrived which was to
see the journey to St. Renny, Ishmael had no pang at leaving her or
anyone else. He was not a shy boy, and felt only intense interest at the
thought of what lay before him. For the journey in a railway train was
alone enough to set the blood thrilling--it was a thing that no one whom
Ishmael knew, excepting Parson Boase, had ever undertaken. It was only a
matter of five years since the West Cornwall Railway from Truro Road to
Penzance had been opened. The same year the great Duke had died, but the
opening of the railway, with the mayor and all the magistrates and the
volunteer band in attendance, had made far the greater stir in West
Penwith. Iron Dukes were intangible creatures compared with iron
engines, although the Parson had preached about the former and seemed to
think, as some parishioners said, that it might have been the Almighty
Himself who had passed away. Wellington had gone, but the railway had
come--therein lay the difference; and Ishmael swelled with pride as he
talked casually to Phoebe of the experience before him.

The miller lent his trap for the drive into Penzance, for, incredible as
it may seem, there was still hardly a cart in the countryside, all the
carrying of turf, furze, and produce being done on donkeys' back, and
thus it came about that Phoebe came too to see him off. She held her
round softly-tinted face, with the mouse-coloured ringlets falling away
from it, up to his in the railway station as he prepared to climb to his
place in the pumpkin-shaped compartment. He ensured a tear-wet pillow
for her that night by merely shaking her hand at the full length of a
rigid arm.

CHAPTER IX

FRESH PASTURE

For most children the first day at school is a memorable landmark; for
Ishmael it was the more so because all his life hitherto he had lived in
one atmosphere, without the little voyagings and visitings in which more
happily-placed children are able to indulge. The change to St. Renny,
although in the same county, was a great one, for whereas Cloom lay on
the wind-swept promontory where only occasional folds in the land could
give some hint of what gentler-nurtured pastures might be like, the
whole little grey town of St. R