Milly and Olly | Page 7

the railway carriage, and nurse and father and mother
came next, with all the bags and shawls and umbrellas.
Such a settling of legs and arms and packages there was; and in the
middle of it "whew" went the whistle, and off they went away to the
mountains.
But they had a long way to go before they saw any mountains. First of
all they had to get to Bletchley, and it took about an hour doing that.
And oh! what a lovely morning it was, and how fresh and green the
fields looked as the train hurried along past them. Olly and Milly could
see hundreds and thousands of moon-daisies and buttercups growing
among the wet grass, and every now and then came great bushes of
wild-roses, some pink and some white, and long pools with yellow
irises growing along the side; and sometimes the train went rushing
through a little village, and they could see the little children trotting
along to school, with their books and slates tucked under their arms;
and sometimes they went along for miles together without seeing
anything but the white-and-brown cows in the fields, and the great

mother-sheep with their fat white lambs beside them. The sun shone so
brightly, the buttercups were so yellow, the roses so pink, and the sky
so blue, it was like a fairy world. Olly and Milly were always shouting
and clapping their hands at something or other, for Milly had grown
almost as wild as Olly.
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."
When Olly had seen his father's eyes tight shut, and heard him give just
one little snore--it was rather a make-believe snore--he did let nurse
draw him on to her knee; and very soon the