Sh-sh-sh-sh went the train, getting slower and slower till at last it
stopped altogether.
"Bletchley, Bletchley!" shouted Olly, jumping down off the seat.
"No, my boy," said his father, catching hold of him, "we shall stop five
more times before we get to Bletchley; so don't be impatient."
But at last came Bletchley, and the children were lifted out into the
middle of such a bustle, as it seemed to Milly. There were crowds of
people at the station, and they were all pushing backward and forward,
and shouting and talking.
"Keep hold of me, Olly," said Milly, with an anxious little face. "Oh,
Nana, don't let him go!"
But nurse held him fast; and very soon they were through the crowd, and
father had put them safe into their new train, into a carriage marked
"Windermere," which would take them all the way to their journey's end.
"That was like lions and bears, wasn't it, mother?" said Olly, pointing
to the crowd in the station, as they went puffing away. Now, "lions and
bears" was a favourite game of the children's, a romping game, where
everybody ran about and pretended to be somebody else, and where the
more people played, and the more they ran and pushed and tumbled about,
the funnier, it was. And the running, scrambling people at the station
did look rather as if they were playing at lions and bears.
And now the children had a long day before them. On rushed the train,
past towns and villages, and houses and trains. The sun got hotter and
hotter, and the children began to get a little tired of looking out of
window. Milly asked for a story-book, and was soon very happy reading
"Snow White and Rose Red." She had read it a hundred times before, but
that never mattered a bit. Olly came to sit on nurse's knee while she
showed him pictures, and so the time passed away. And now the train
stopped again, and father lifted Olly on his knee to see a great church
far away over the houses, and taught him to say "Lichfield Cathedral."
And then came Stafford; and Milly looked out for the castle, and
wondered whether the castles in her story-books looked like that, and
whether princesses and fairy godmothers and giants ever lived there in
old times.
After they had left Stafford, Olly began to get tired and fidgety. First
he went to sit on his father's knee, then on mother's, then on
nurse's--none of them could keep him still, and nothing seemed to amuse
him for long together.
"Come and have a sleep, Master Olly," said nurse. "You are just tired
and hot. This is a long way for little boys, and we've got ever so far
to go yet."
"I'm not sleepy, Nana," said Olly, sitting straight up, with a little
flushed face and wide-open eyes. "I'm going to keep awake like father."
"Father's going to sleep, then," said Mr. Norton, tucking himself up in
a shady corner; "so you go too, Olly, and see which of us can go
quickest."