Gladly enough the others obeyed her eager signals.  Joyfully they scrambled up into the high carriage and dropped on the dusty, gritty seats.  Dan and his enemies exchanged broad, sheepish smiles, but they were amiable smiles.  Tonkin flung up the last of the faggots and climbed up on the engine, and off they started.  And what a journey it was!  All about them stretched the country, vast and still and empty, they themselves, seemingly, the only living creatures in it, the panting and rumbling of the engine the only sound to be heard, for it drowned all such gentle sounds as the “good-nights” of the birds, the distant lowing of cows, the rippling of the brook beside the way.

Daylight was fading fast.  Here and there the way was narrow, and the hedges so high that the hawthorns almost met overhead; and here and there, where tall fir trees lined the road on either side, it was very nearly dark.

By two of them, at least, that journey in the fading light was never forgotten.  It had been such a happy day, so free from worries and naughtiness or squabbles, or any cause for regret; and now they were going home, happy but tired, and longing to be in the dear old untidy, shabby home again.  Kitty, with Tony nestling against her, leaned back in her corner restfully, and thought of her home with a depth of feeling she could not have defined.  “If it could only be like this always,” she said to herself, “and there is no reason why it shouldn’t if only we were good and every one was nice.  I wonder, I wonder if I cannot make it so that father wouldn’t want any one to live with us.”

On they rattled and jolted, past the two cottages, with their windows lighted up now and the blinds drawn; past the little well, its cave looking dark and mysterious under its green canopy.  Kitty, lost to the others and their talk, gazed with loving eyes at everything.  “Dear little well,” she thought.  “Dear old ‘Rover,’ and Gorlay, and home, how I do love every inch and stick and stone of it!  I think I should die if I had to leave—­”

“Kitty, have you got a shilling?” Dan shrieked in her ear with such vigour that Kitty really leaped in her seat.

“What is the matter?” she demanded crossly.  It was not pleasant to be roused from her musings and brought back thus to everyday, prosaic matters; and it happened to her so often, or so it seemed.

“I have asked you three times already.  Have you got a shilling?  We shall have to get down presently, or we shall be seen, and the men and all of us will get into a row because we are travelling without tickets.  We had better get down when they come to the ’lotment gardens, and we must tip them; but Betty has only got tuppence, and I have only fourpence, and that is all in coppers, mostly ha’pennies.  I don’t like to offer it to them.”

“I haven’t a shilling,” said Kitty regretfully.  “I have only eightpence left; the tea cost a good deal,” and she produced from her purse a sixpenny bit and two pennies.