For half an hour after that last good-bye Charlie leaned back in the corner of his carriage and gave himself up to his loneliness, and I could feel his chest heaving to keep down the tears that would every now and then rise unbidden to his eyes.
But what boy of thirteen can be in the dumps for long?
Especially if he has a new watch in his pocket.

Charlie was himself again before we had well got clear of London, and his reviving spirits gradually recalled to his memory his father's parting gift, which had for a while been half forgotten amid other cares.
Now again I was produced, I was turned over and over, was listened to, was peeped into, was flourished about, was taken off my chain, and put on again with the supremest satisfaction.

At every station we came to, out I came from his pocket, to be compared with the railway time.

By the clock at Batfield I was a minute slow--a discrepancy which was no sooner discovered than I felt my glass face opened, and a fat finger and thumb putting forward my hand to the required time.

At Norbely I was two minutes fast by the clock, and then (oh, horrors!) I found myself put back in the same rough-and-ready way.