Such a crushed, dull-eyed, subdued-looking eight they were as they tumbled out on the Curlewis platform when five o'clock came.

Judy coughed at the wet, early, air, and was hurried into the waiting-room and wrapped in a rug.
Then the train tossed out their trunks and portmanteaux and rushed on again, leaving them desolate and miserable, looking after it, for it seemed no one had come to meet them.
The sound of wet wheels slushing through puddles, the crack of a whip, the even falling of horses' feet, and they were all outside again, looking beyond the white railway palings to the road.
There were a big, covered waggonette driven by a wide yellow oil-skin with a man somewhere in its interior, and a high buggy, from which an immensely tall man was climbing.
"Father!" Esther rushed out into the rain.

She put her arms round the dripping mackintosh and clung fast to it for a minute or two.

Perhaps that is what made her cheeks and eyes so wet and shining.
"Little girl--little Esther child!" he said, and almost lifted her off the ground as he kissed her, tall though Meg considered her.
Then he hurried them all off into the buggies, five in one and three in the other.

There was a twenty-five-mile drive before them yet.
"When did you have anything to eat last ?" he asked; the depressed looks of the children were making him quite unhappy.