But when Phyllis was going to add jam to her bread and butter, Mother said:—
“Jam OR butter, dear — not jam AND butter. We can’t afford that sort of reckless luxury nowadays.”
Phyllis finished the slice of bread and butter in silence, and followed it up by bread and jam. Peter mingled thought and weak tea.
After tea they went back to the attic and he said to his sisters:—
“I have an idea.”
“What’s that?” they asked politely.
“I shan’t tell you,” was Peter’s unexpected rejoinder.
“Oh, very well,” said Bobbie; and Phil said, “Don’t, then.”
“Girls,” said Peter, “are always so hasty tempered.”
“I should like to know what boys are?” said Bobbie, with fine disdain. “I don’t want to know about your silly ideas.”
“You’ll know some day,” said Peter, keeping his own temper by what looked exactly like a miracle; “if you hadn’t been so keen on a row, I might have told you about it being only noble-heartedness that made me not tell you my idea. But now I shan’t tell you anything at all about it — so there!”
And it was, indeed, some time before he could be induced to say anything, and when he did it wasn’t much. He said:—
“The only reason why I won’t tell you my idea that I’m going to do is because it MAY be wrong, and I don’t want to drag you into it.”
“Don’t you do it if it’s wrong, Peter,” said Bobbie; “let me do it.” But Phyllis said:—
“I should like to do wrong if YOU’RE going to!”
“No,” said Peter, rather touched by this devotion; “it’s a forlorn hope, and I’m going to lead it. All I ask is that if Mother asks where I am, you won’t blab.”
“We haven’t got anything TO blab,” said Bobbie, indignantly.
“Oh, yes, you have!” said Peter, dropping horse-beans through his fingers. “I’ve trusted you to the death. You know I’m going to do a lone adventure — and some people might think it wrong — I don’t. And if Mother asks where I am, say I’m playing at mines.”
“What sort of mines?”
“You just say mines.”
“You might tell US, Pete.”
“Well, then, COAL-mines. But don’t you let the word pass your lips on pain of torture.”
“You needn’t threaten,” said Bobbie, “and I do think you might let us help.”
“If I find a coal-mine, you shall help cart the coal,” Peter condescended to promise.
“Keep your secret if you like,” said Phyllis.
“Keep it if you CAN,” said Bobbie.
“I’ll keep it, right enough,” said Peter.
Between tea and supper there is an interval even in the most greedily regulated families. At this time Mother was usually writing, and Mrs. Viney had gone home.
Two nights after the dawning of Peter’s idea he beckoned the girls mysteriously at the twilight hour.
“Come hither with me,” he said, “and bring the Roman Chariot.”
The Roman Chariot was a very old perambulator that had spent years of retirement in the loft over the coach-house. The children had oiled its works till it glided noiseless as a pneumatic bicycle, and answered to the helm as it had probably done in its best days.
“Follow your dauntless leader,” said Peter, and led the way down the hill towards the station.
Just above the station many rocks have pushed their heads out through the turf as though they, like the children, were interested in the railway.
In a little hollow between three rocks lay a heap of dried brambles and heather.
Peter halted, turned over the brushwood with a well-scarred boot, and said:—
“Here’s the first coal from the St. Peter’s Mine. We’ll take it home in the chariot. Punctuality and despatch. All orders carefully attended to. Any shaped lump cut to suit regular customers.”
The chariot was packed full of coal. And when it was packed it had to be unpacked again because it was so heavy that it couldn’t be got up the hill by the three children, not even when Peter harnessed himself to the handle with his braces, and firmly grasping his waistband in one hand pulled while the girls pushed behind.
Three journeys had to be made before the coal from Peter’s mine was added to the heap of Mother’s coal in the cellar.
Afterwards Peter went out alone, and came back very black and mysterious.
“I’ve been to my coal-mine,” he said; “to-morrow evening we’ll bring home the black diamonds in the chariot.”
It was a week later that Mrs. Viney remarked to Mother how well this last lot of coal was holding out.
The children hugged themselves and each other in complicated wriggles of silent laughter as they listened on the stairs. They had all forgotten by now that there had ever been any doubt in Peter’s mind as to whether coal-mining was wrong.
But there came a dreadful night when the Station Master put on a pair of old sand shoes that he had worn at the seaside in his summer holiday, and crept out very quietly to the yard where the Sodom and Gomorrah heap of coal was, with the whitewashed line round it. He crept out there, and he waited like a cat by a mousehole. On the top of the heap something small and dark was scrabbling and rattling furtively among the coal.
The Station Master concealed himself in the shadow of a brake-van that had a little tin chimney and was labelled:—
G. N. and S. R.
34576
Return at once to
White Heather Sidings
and in this concealment he lurked till the small thing on the top of the heap ceased to scrabble and rattle, came to the edge of the heap, cautiously let itself down, and lifted something after it. Then the arm of the Station Master was raised, the hand of the Station Master fell on a collar, and there was Peter firmly held by the jacket, with an old carpenter’s bag full of coal in his trembling clutch.
“So I’ve caught you at last, have I, you young thief?” said the Station Master.
“I’m not a thief,” said Peter, as firmly as he could. “I’m a coal-miner.”
“Tell that to the Marines,” said the Station Master.
“It would be just as true whoever I told it to,” said Peter.
“You’re right there,” said the man, who held him. “Stow your jaw, you young rip, and come along to the station.”
“Oh, no,” cried in the darkness an agonised voice that was not Peter’s.
“Not the POLICE station!” said another voice from the darkness.
“Not yet,” said the Station Master. “The Railway Station first. Why, it’s a regular gang. Any more of you?”
“Only us,” said Bobbie and Phyllis, coming out of the shadow of another truck labelled Staveley Colliery, and bearing on it the legend in white chalk: ‘Wanted in No. 1 Road.’
“What do you mean by spying on a fellow like this?” said Peter, angrily.
“Time someone did spy on you, I think,” said the Station Master. “Come along