"Leave this to me," I said calmly. "Porter!--
PORTER!!--PORTER!!!--Oh, guard, what station's this?"
"Byres, sir."
"Byres?"
"Yes, sir." He blew his whistle and the train went on again.
"At any rate we know now that it WAS Byres," I remarked, when the
silence began to get oppressive.
"It's all very well for you," Beatrice burst out indignantly, "but
you don't think about Baby. We don't know a bit where we are--"
"That's the one thing we do know," I said. "We're at this little
Byres place."
"It was the porter's fault at Liverpool Street," said John
consolingly. "He told us it was a through carriage."
"I don't care whose fault it was; I'm only thinking of Baby."
"What time do babies go to bed as a rule?" I asked.
"This one goes at six."
"Well, then, she's got another hour. Now, what would Napoleon have
done?"
"Napoleon," said John, after careful thought, "would have turned all
your clothes out of your bag, would have put the baby in it
diagonally, and have bored holes in the top for ventilation. That's
as good as going to bed--you avoid the worst of the evening mists.
And people would only think you kept caterpillars."
Beatrice looked at him coldly.
"That's a way to talk of your daughter," she said in scorn.
"Don't kill him," I begged, "We may want him. Now I've got another
idea. If you look out of the window you observe that we are on a
SINGLE line."
"Well, I envy it. And, however single it is, we're going away from
home in it."
"True. But the point is that no train can come back on it until
we've stopped going forward. So, you see, there's no object in
getting out of this train until it has finished for the day.
Probably it will go back itself before long, out of sheer boredom.
And it's much better waiting here than on a draughty Byres
platform."
Beatrice, quite seeing the point, changed the subject.
"There's my trunk will go on to Brookfield, and the wagonette will
meet the train, and as we aren't there it will go away without the
trunk, and all baby's things are in it."
"She's not complaining," I said. "She's just mentioning it."
"Look here," said John reproachfully, "we're doing all we can. We're
both thinking like anything." He picked up his paper again.
I was beginning to get annoyed. It was, of course, no good to get as
anxious and excited as Beatrice; that wouldn't help matters at all.
On the other hand, the entire indifference of John and the baby was
equally out of place. It seemed to me that there was a middle and
Napoleonic path in between these two extremes which only I was
following. To be convinced that one is the only person doing the
right thing is always annoying.
"I've just made another discovery," I said in a hurt voice. "There's
a map over John's head, if he'd only had the sense to look there
before. There we are," and I pointed with my stick; "there's Byres.
The line goes round and round and eventually goes through Dearmer.
We get out at Dearmer, and we're only three miles from Brookfield."
"What they call a loop line," assisted John, "because it's in the
shape of a loop."
"It's not so bad as it might be," admitted Beatrice grudgingly,
after studying the map, "but it's five miles home from Dearmer; and
what about my trunk?"