Milly and Olly | Page 8

shake Olly a great many times before he would open his sleepy eyes, and then he stood up rubbing them as if he would rub them quite away. Father lifted him out, and carried him into a big room, with a big table in it, all ready for dinner, and hungry people sitting round it. What fun it was having dinner at a station, with all the grown-up people. Milly and Olly thought there never was such nice bread and such nice apple-tart. Nothing at home ever tasted half so good. And after dinner father took them a little walk up and down the platform, and at last, just as it was time to get into the train again, he bought them a paper full of pictures, called the Graphic, that amused Olly for a long way.
But it was a long long way to Windermere, and poor Milly and Olly began to get very tired. The trees at Wigan did make them laugh a little bit, but they were too tired to think them as funny as they would have thought them in the morning. They are such comical trees! First of all, the smoke from the smoky chimneys at Wigan has made them black, and stopped the leaves from growing, and then the wind has blown them all over on one side, so that they look like ugly little twisted dwarfs, as if some cruel fairy had touched them with her wand. But Olly soon forgot all about them; and he began to wander from one end to the other of the carriage again, scrambling and jumping about, till he gave himself a hard knock against the seat; and that made him begin to cry--poor tired little Olly. Then mother lifted him on to her knee, and said to him, very softly, "Are you very tired, Olly? Never mind, poor little man, we shan't be very long now, and we're all tired, darling--father's tired, and I'm tired; and look at Milly there, she looks like a little white ghost. Suppose you be brave, and try a little extra hard to be good. Then mother'll love you an extra bit. And what do you think we shall see soon? such a lovely bit of blue sea with white ships on it. Just you shut your eyes a little bit till it comes, I'll be sure to tell you."
And sure enough, after Lancaster, mother gave a little cry, and Olly jumped up, and Milly came running over, and there before them lay the dancing windy blue sea, covered over with little white waves, running and tumbling over each other. And on the other side of it, what did the children see?
"Mother, mother! what is it?" cried Olly, pointing with his little brown hand far away; "is it a fairy palace, mother?"
"Perhaps it is, Olly; anyway, the hill-fairies live there. For those are the mountains, the beautiful mountains we are going to see."
"But how shall we get across the sea to them?" asked Milly, with a puzzled face.
"This is only a corner of the sea, Milly--a bay. Don't you remember bays in your geography? We can't go across it, but we can go round it, and we shall find the mountains on the other side."
Oh! how fast the train seemed to go now that there was something to look at. Everywhere mountains were beginning to spring up. And when they had said good-bye to the sea, the mountains began to grow taller and taller. What had happened to the houses too? They had all turned white or gray; there was no red one left. And the fields had stone walls instead of hedges; and inside the walls there were small sheep, about as big as the lambs they had seen near Oxford in the morning.
Oxenholme, Kendal, Windermere. How glad the tired children were when the train ran slowly down into Windermere station, and they could jump out and say good-bye to it for a long, long time! They had to wait a little, till father had found all the boxes and put them in the carriage that was waiting for them, and then in they tumbled, nurse having first wrapped them up in big shawls, for it was evening now, and the wind had grown cold. That was a nice drive home among the mountains. How tall and dark and quiet they were. And what was this shining on their left hand, like a white face running beside them, and peeping from behind the trees? Why, it was a lake; a great wide lake, with tiny boats upon it, some with white sails and some without.
"Mother! mother! may we go in those boats some day?" shouted Olly, in a little sharp tired voice, and his mother smiled at him, and said--"Yes, very