Chapter III. The old gentleman.


After the adventure of Peter's Coal-mine, it seemed well to the
children to keep away from the station--but they did not, they could
not, keep away from the railway. They had lived all their lives in
a street where cabs and omnibuses rumbled by at all hours, and the
carts of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers (I never saw a
candlestick-maker's cart; did you?) might occur at any moment. Here
in the deep silence of the sleeping country the only things that
went by were the trains. They seemed to be all that was left to
link the children to the old life that had once been theirs.
Straight down the hill in front of Three Chimneys the daily passage
of their six feet began to mark a path across the crisp, short turf.
They began to know the hours when certain trains passed, and they
gave names to them. The 9.15 up was called the Green Dragon. The
10.7 down was the Worm of Wantley. The midnight town express, whose
shrieking rush they sometimes woke from their dreams to hear, was
the Fearsome Fly-by-night. Peter got up once, in chill starshine,
and, peeping at it through his curtains, named it on the spot.

It was by the Green Dragon that the old gentleman travelled. He was
a very nice-looking old gentleman, and he looked as if he were nice,
too, which is not at all the same thing. He had a fresh-coloured,
clean-shaven face and white hair, and he wore rather odd-shaped
collars and a top-hat that wasn't exactly the same kind as other
people's. Of course the children didn't see all this at first. In
fact the first thing they noticed about the old gentleman was his