Milly and Olly | Page 8

little gipsy creature was
fast asleep, with all his brown curls lying like a soft mat over nurse's
arm. Milly, too, shut her eyes and sat very still; she did not mean to go
to sleep, but presently she began to think a great many sleepy thoughts:
Why did the hedges run so fast? and why did the telegraph wires go up
and down as if they were always making curtsies? and was that really
mother opposite, or was it Cinderella's fairy godmother? And all of a
sudden Milly came bump up against a tall blue mountain that had a
face like a man, and cried out when she bumped upon it!

"Crewe, I declare," exclaimed father, jumping up with a start. "Why,
Olly and I have been asleep nearly an hour! Wake up, children, it's
dinner-time."
Nurse had to 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