He realised with terror that they were, many of them, boys--boys with friends and boys without. He watched them with a great feeling of desolation and homesickness as they flung themselves into carriages and shouted at one another. A small boy with a very red face and a round fat body, attended by a tall, thin lady in black, got into the carriage, and behaving as if Peter weren't there at all, leaned out of the window. “All right, mater. That's all right. I'll tell 'em about the socks--old Mother Gill will look after that.” “You won't forget to send me a post card to-night, Will, dear, will you?” “No, mater, that's all right. I say, don't you bother to wait if you want to be off.” “No, dear, I'd like to wait. Don't forget to give father's letter to Mr. Raggett.” “All right. I say it's rotten for you waiting about, really. Give my love to Floss!” “Well, perhaps I had better go. This train seems to be late. Good-bye, dearest boy.” An interval, during which the stout boy leaned out of the window and was embraced. Soon his bowler hat was flung wildly on to the rack and he was leaning out of the window, screaming: “Cocker! I say, Cocker! Cocker! Oh! dash it, he's going in there. Cocker! Cocker! Hullo, Bisket! going strong? Cocker! Oh! there he is! Hullo, old man! Thought I should miss you. Come on in here! Thought I'd never get rid of the mater. They do hang about!” A small boy with his hat on one side got into the carriage, stepped on Peter's feet without apologising, and then the two gentlemen sat down at the other end of the carriage and exchanged experiences. “What sort of hols.?” “Oh, pretty rotten! Got nothing for Christmas at all except a measly knife or two--governor played it awfully low down.” “I rather scored because my sister had a ripping writing case sent to her, and I gave her a rotten old book in exchange, and she jolly well had to.” And so it continued. To Peter it was completely unintelligible. The boys at old Parlow's had never talked like this. He was suddenly flung into a foreign country. The dismay in his heart grew as he remembered that he was going into this life entirely alone and without a friend in the world. He felt that he would, had it been possible, gladly have exchanged this dreadful plunge for a beating from his father. At any rate, after that there were friends to whom one might go--after this?... As the train dragged slowly and painfully along the dreariness and the loneliness increased. The dusk fell, and they stopped, as it seemed, every other minute, and always Peter thought that it must be Salton and prepared to get out. The two boys in his carriage paid no attention to him whatever, and their voices continued incessantly, and always the little train jolted along sleepily wandering through the dark country and carrying him to unknown terrors. But he set his teeth hard and remembered what the Old Gentleman had told him. He would fight it out and see it through.