CHAPTER 1

      JUST IN TIME

      THORPE STATION at Norwich is a terminus. Trains from the middle of England and the south run in there, and if they are going on east and north by way of Wroxham, they run out of the station by the same way they ran in. Dick and Dorothea Callum had never been in Norfolk before, and for ten minutes they had been waiting in that station, sitting in the train, for fear it should go on again at once, as it had at Ipswich and Colchester and the few other stations at which it had stopped. The journey was nearly over. They had only a few more miles to go, but Dorothea, whose mind was always busy with scenes that might do for the books she meant to write, was full of the thought of how dreadful it would be if old Mrs. Barrable, with whom they were going to stay, should be waiting on Wroxham station and the train should arrive without them. She would go back to her boat, for she was living in a boat somewhere down the river, and Dick and Dorothea, even if they did manage to reach Wroxham by some later train, would never be able to find her. So when Dick had wanted to get out of the carriage and go along the platform to watch the engine being coupled on at the other end of the train, Dorothea had been very much against it. If Dick were to get out, she would have to get out too, lest one should be left behind and the other carried on to Wroxham alone. And if she got out, why then the train might go on without either of them and their luggage might end up anywhere. She looked at the two small suit-cases on the rack (“Don’t let them bring much luggage; there isn’t room,” Mrs. Barrable had written). So Dick and she had wasted ten whole minutes sitting in the carriage, looking out of the open window at the almost empty platform.

      A whistle blew, and the guard waved a green flag.

      “Bring your head in now, Dick,” said Dorothea, “and close the window.”

      But before Dick had time to pull the window up, they saw a boy come hurrying along the platform. He was heavily laden, with a paper parcel which he was hugging to himself so as to have that hand free for a large can of paint, while on the other arm he had slung a coil of new rope. He was hurrying along beside the train, looking into the windows of the carriages as if he were searching for someone he knew. And Dorothea noticed that, though it was a fine, dry spring day, he was wearing a pair of rubber knee-boots.

      “He’ll miss it if he doesn’t get in,” said Dick.

      “Hurry up, there, if you’re going,” a porter shouted and at that moment, just after he had passed their window, the boy stumbled over a rope’s end that had fallen from his coil. Down he went. His tin of paint rolled on towards the edge of the platform. His parcel burst its paper. Some blocks and shackles flew out.

      The train had begun to move. A porter far down the platform was running towards the boy, who had jumped up again almost as if he had bounced, had grabbed his blocks and crammed them in his pockets, and had stopped the escaping paint-tin with his foot just before it rolled between the platform