He slackened his pace a little when he came within sight of the station, for it looked as quiet and sleepy as though no train was expected for ages yet; and the eager, shy old man felt that the men at the station would laugh at him for arriving more than half-an-hour before any train was due.  For a moment he decided to turn away and walk in some other direction until some of the time had passed, but the seats on the platform looked very restful, and the platform, bathed in the soft afternoon sunshine, looked wonderfully peaceful and inviting.  There was not a sign of life, or a sound or a movement, except that of the little breeze ruffling the young leaves on the chestnuts in the road outside.

“I’ll explain to Mr. Simmons that I come early so as to be able to tell him about the little maid, while he’d got a few spare minutes before the train came in,” he decided, and, with a sigh of relief, made his way into the station.  He was tired after his exciting, busy day, and glad to sit down alone, to think over all that the day had brought them, and was likely to bring them.

Mr. Simmons, the station-master, must have been tired too, though his day had been neither busy nor exciting, for when at last he did appear, he was stretching and yawning as though the nap he had been having in his office had not been quite long enough for him.

When he saw Thomas his eye brightened, and he joined him at once, for he dearly loved a gossip, and he had in his mind a long story that he was impatient to pour out to somebody.  The story was so long and so interesting that the whistle of the fast-approaching train was heard long before it was ended, and of his own story Thomas had not been able to tell a word.

“Is that the London train?” he asked eagerly, starting to his feet.

“It is, sir.  Are you going by it?”

“No—­o, oh no,” said Thomas.  His face flushed and his hands shook as a carriage door opened here and there and a passenger got out.

“Are ’ee expecting somebody?” asked the station-master, with just a touch of impatience in his voice.  He did not approve of this reserve in Thomas, just after he had confided all that story to him too.

“Well, I hardly know,” said Thomas slowly.  “I am, and I ain’t.”  A dull sick feeling of bitter disappointment filling his heart as he saw that beyond the two men who had sprung out at once, no one else was appearing.  “I was going to tell ’ee about it, only the train corned in.  I’m—­I’m expecting my little granddaughter.  She may come any day, by any train, so far as we know, for they—­her mother, at least, forgot to say which.”

The station-master, seeing that his presence was not required by the new arrivals, stood ready to listen to Thomas’s story.  “Didn’t tell you when to expect her!” he exclaimed in surprise.

“No—­o,” said Thomas reluctantly.  He shrank from talking about it, for fear Mr. Simmons would ask questions he did not want, or was unable, to answer.  “She overlooked it, I reckon; and there hasn’t been time to write and get an answer, so I thought I’d just step up and see this train in.”