The man looked at the clock, sprang to the levers, and wrenched them this way and that.An electric bell tingled--the wires and cranks creaked, and the man threw himself into a chair.He was very pale, and the sweat stood on his forehead "like large dewdrops on a white cabbage," as Phyllis remarked later.He was trembling, too; the children could see his big hairy hands shake from side to side, "with quite extra-sized trembles," to use the subsequent words of Peter.He drew long breaths.Then suddenly he cried, "Thank God, thank God you come in when you did--oh, thank God!" and his shoulders began to heave and his face grew red again, and he hid it in those large hairy hands of his.
"Oh, don't cry--don't," said Phyllis, "it's all right now," and she patted him on one big, broad shoulder, while Peter conscientiously thumped the other.
But the signalman seemed quite broken down, and the children had to pat him and thump him for quite a long time before he found his handkerchief--a red one with mauve and white horseshoes on it--and mopped his face and spoke.During this patting and thumping interval a train thundered by.
"I'm downright shamed, that I am," were the words of the big signalman when he had stopped crying; "snivelling like a kid." Then suddenly he seemed to get cross."And what was you doing up here, anyway?" he said; "you know it ain't allowed.""Yes," said Phyllis, "we knew it was wrong--but I wasn't afraid of doing wrong, and so it turned out right.You aren't sorry we came.""Lor' love you--if you hadn't 'a' come--" he stopped and then went on."It's a disgrace, so it is, sleeping on duty.If it was to come to be known--even as it is, when no harm's come of it.""It won't come to be known," said Peter; "we aren't sneaks.All the same, you oughtn't to sleep on duty--it's dangerous.""Tell me something I don't know," said the man, "but I can't help it.I know'd well enough just how it 'ud be.But I couldn't get off.They couldn't get no one to take on my duty.I tell you Iain't had ten minutes' sleep this last five days.My little chap's ill--pewmonia, the Doctor says--and there's no one but me and 'is little sister to do for him.That's where it is.The gell must 'ave her sleep.Dangerous? Yes, I believe you.Now go and split on me if you like.""Of course we won't," said Peter, indignantly, but Phyllis ignored the whole of the signalman's speech, except the first six words.
"You asked us," she said, "to tell you something you don't know.
Well, I will.There's a boy in the tunnel over there with a red jersey and his leg broken.""What did he want to go into the blooming tunnel for, then?" said the man.
"Don't you be so cross," said Phyllis, kindly."WE haven't done anything wrong except coming and waking you up, and that was right, as it happens."Then Peter told how the boy came to be in the tunnel.
"Well," said the man, "I don't see as I can do anything.I can't leave the box.""You might tell us where to go after someone who isn't in a box, though," said Phyllis.
"There's Brigden's farm over yonder--where you see the smoke a-coming up through the trees," said the man, more and more grumpy, as Phyllis noticed.
"Well, good-bye, then," said Peter.
But the man said, "Wait a minute." He put his hand in his pocket and brought out some money--a lot of pennies and one or two shillings and sixpences and half-a-crown.He picked out two shillings and held them out.
"Here," he said."I'll give you this to hold your tongues about what's taken place to-day."There was a short, unpleasant pause.Then:--"You ARE a nasty man, though, aren't you?" said Phyllis.
Peter took a step forward and knocked the man's hand up, so that the shillings leapt out of it and rolled on the floor.
"If anything COULD make me sneak, THAT would!" he said."Come, Phil," and marched out of the signal-box with flaming cheeks.
