ttle maid, while he'd got a few spare minutes
before the train came in," he decided, and, with a sigh of relief,
made his way into the station. He was tired after his exciting, busy
day, and glad to sit down alone, to think over all that the day had
brought them, and was likely to bring them.

Mr. Simmons, the station-master, must have been tired too, though his
day had been neither busy nor exciting, for when at last he did
appear, he was stretching and yawning as though the nap he had been
having in his office had not been quite long enough for him.

When he saw Thomas his eye brightened, and he joined him at once, for
he dearly loved a gossip, and he had in his mind a long story that he
was impatient to pour out to somebody. The story was so long and so
interesting that the whistle of the fast-approaching train was heard
long before it was ended, and of his own story Thomas had not been
able to tell a word.

"Is that the London train?" he asked eagerly, starting to his feet.

"It is, sir. Are you going by it?"

"No--o, oh no," said Thomas. His face flushed and his hands shook as
a carriage door opened here and there and a passenger got out.

"Are 'ee expecting somebody?" asked the station-master, with just a
touch of impatience in his voice. He did not approve of this reserve
in Thomas, just after he had confided all that story to him too.

"Well, I hardly know," said Thomas slowly. "I am, and I ain't."
A dull sick feeling of bitter disappointment filling his heart as he
saw that beyond the two men who had sprung out at once, no one else
was appearing. "I was going to tell 'ee about it, only the train
corned in. I'm--I'm expecting my little granddaughter. She may come
any day, by any train, so far as we know, for they--her mother, at
least, forgot to say which."

The station-master, seeing that his presence was not required by the
new arrivals, stood ready to listen to Thomas's story. "Didn't tell
you when to expect her!" he exclaimed in surprise.

"No--o," said Thomas reluctantly. He shrank from talking about it,
for fear Mr. Simmons would ask questions he did not want, or was
unable, to answer. "She overlooked it, I reckon; and there hasn't
been time to write and get an answer, so I thought I'd just step up
and see this train in."

"Well, we may as well go the length of her and make sure," said Mr.
Simmons, "if the child is very young, she may be afraid to move, or
p'raps she doesn't know th