The British Portable

THE

AT

St. Leonards-on-Sea & Southport

FOR RAILWAY MEN

are open to all Railway Employees on all lines who need rest and change after Sickness or Accident.

TERMS.-With a Subscriber's Letter, available for three week's, 5/6 per week. Without a Subscriber's Letter, 12/6 per week. Copy of Rules and further information may be had from THE SECRETARY, The Railway Mission, I Adam Street, Strand, London, W.C.

Railway Men who need rest and change after two weeks' consecutive illness, and who have contributed One Shilling per annum to the Railway Mission Convalescent Homes' Fund, will be admitted once in a year for a fortnight free of charge. patients to be admitted under the ordinary rules of the Home.

All

£1,500 IS NEEDED ANNUALLY. The Committee earnestly appeal for donations towards this sum, and also for anuual subscriptions for the maintenance of the Homes. .*. Donations and Subscriptions will be gratefully received and acknowledged by

S. G. SHEPPARD, Esq., Treasurer, 57 Old Broad Street,
London, E.C., or the

SECRETARY, The Railway Mission, 1 Adam Street, Strand, W.C.,
who will send collecting cards and boxes to any friends
who may wish to collect.

MARCH, 1905.

No. 3, Vol. XXIV.

Lassie's "Afterward."

BY GRACE PETTMAN.

Author of "Lassie," "To Reap the Whirlwind," etc., etc.

T

CHAPTER III.

A SUNDAY SCHOOL TREAT.

HIS way, children, this way!"

The young curate, it was his first charge, and he looked little more than a great schoolboy himself, was gesticulating, ordering, marshalling a huge crowd of merry, excited children on the somewhat limited quarters of a suburban station. It was the one great day of all the year, the children's Sunday school treat.

Mr. Carruthers, the curate, was scarcely less eager than the children themselves, entering into all the fun and enjoyment most thoroughly, and at the same time keeping a firm hand upon the reins of discipline.

He had a noble band of teachers at the big mission Sunday school,working people, inany of them, for the neighbourhood where his iron church was situated was a very poor One indeed.

"Ah, Champion! glad to see you, indeed. Just the man we want to see these sort of days. You got a day off, then?"

The curate was shaking hands with a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow, whose bronzed, rugged face told of a life of exposure and hardening. He was comfortably dressed in a well-cut suit of dark blue-a typical specimen of a fine young British workman out for a holiday.

"Yes, sir, I had a job to get the day, though! You see this sort of thing makes us busy!" and George Champion smiled, not thinking it necessary to remember that by accompanying his cherished class of

eight or ten young pickles of boys to the sea-side he would there fore lose a day's pay.

"Ah, yes, you're an engine driver-and on this line, too," said the curate, with a nod of interest.

Somebody else was interested, very. A tall, pale girl, who had only just become a teacher in the Sunday school, was standing with her group of little girls near enough to hear the curate's words.

"You're an engine-driver!" The girl started and turned sharply to look at that fine fellow standing not a yard away. Then her face was averted, and there was a little quick catch in her breath as she turned away-not before the young driver had noticed her start and look of interest, and wondered why it was. He remembered seeing her at the last teachers' meeting, and noting a new-comer. He fancied he had heard a gossiping girl in the first class say that the new teacher lived at Killarney Lodge with the rich and rather eccentric Miss McBride.

If so, the girl was probably a sort of superior servant.
Somehow, she looked one of the very superior" kind

66

-not the kind of bedraggled, slatternly little mortals he saw in dozens cleaning suburban steps and shaking suburban mats as his train rushed by to the city in the morning. He had always in his own mind associated service with this particular class of little "general," with untidy hair, dirty apron, and shoes down at heel.

This was a girl of altogether different type!

But the train rushed in now-slowed down, and prepared to receive its quantum of juveniles on pleasure bent. George Champion felt quite out of place in a carriage, instead of being on the foot-plate, but he settled himself down with his class of boys, and the train was soon rushing on its way towards Eastbourne, where they were to spend a whole day beside the silver sea.

Meanwhile, Lassie Lindsay had entered another carriage with her little girls and a fellow teacher a multitude of sad thoughts stirring in her heart memories she

66 NOT WANTED NOW-LINE ELECTRIFIED."

would rather have striven to forget on this glorious August day "An engine-driver!"

She almost felt as if in some way she could claim a kinship with that young man a few carriages away. An engine-driver! He was the first railway man she had come in contact with ever since those dark days of long ago.

Those days when her own father, Philip Lindsay, the driver, had broken his heart over the wrecked and ruined home; and then had followed his death, the loss of her brother, and her mother's utter downfall.

On that glorious August morning, as the train flew through the country, Lassie's heart was sadly asking,

"Where is my mother now? What has become of

her?"

Since the day when she had heard that her mother had disappeared from their home in the lowest part of Rexminster, taking with her even Lassie's own personal belongings and selling what she could not take, the girl had never heard a word con. cerning her or her whereabouts.

She might be dead--she might be starving-she might have

sunk to the lowest depths of sin.

And Lassie did not know. It was the biggest shame and the biggest heart-ache of her life, the memory of her drunken mother.

Two years and a half had passed since Lassie had left the hospital and come to Streatham. Ever since she had lived at Killarney Lodge, serving Miss McBride faithfully and well.

The driver's guess was correct-Lassie occupied a very different place nowadays from an ordinary servant in a suburban household.

She and the middle-aged widow, who had come about the same time, did the work of the house between them, but Lassie's early upbringing had fitted her to be valuable to her mistress in many other ways, till she had come almost to occupy the place of a useful help.

At first the workers at the mission church had wondered whether it would be quite suitable to have her for a teachershe had only come as a stop-gap for the Sunday school first of all.

But the children themselves really settled that. Lassie's quiet and gentle influence made itself felt that first Sunday, and her lesson was so simple and yet so well taught,-since it came from the depth of her heart, that it reached the hearts of the little girls themselves.

They begged for their new teacher to come always. The class was vacant, and the mission very short of workers, since very few leisure people lived in the neighbourhood. It was a good long walk from where Miss McBride lived, but Lassie did not mind that. She knew perfectly well that the kindly old lady herself would not object, since she herself it was who had first suggested Lassie as the stop-gap teacher.

And in the new work Lassie was very happy.

She never presumed, or put herself forward in any way; simply went to and fro to her class on Sunday, and so far had made no fresh acquaintances, beyond a kindly word of greeting bestowed on her by the officers of the school.

Somehow, even with other girls in a similar position in life, Lassie never cared to make friends, she felt the shame of her mother's drunken life so keenly that she feared somehow any friendships that might lead to the fact being revealed.

"Teacher, look! look!"

The journey was ended at last, and the whole troop had poured itself out upon the beach, poor Mr. Carruthers looking a trifle anxious as if it were not wholly a day of unmixed pleasure to him.

Lassie herself was almost as excited as the children when at last she felt the cool, soft sea breeze fanning her hot cheeks. London in August is trying to anybody-and Lassie had never been the same since her illness more than two years before.

She cast care aside, entering into the fun and enjoyment of the children. It was the first time poor Lassie Lindsay had really played and entered into games since her own childhood was so terribly shadowed by the cloud of her mother's sin.

And that drunken, unmotherly mother,-where was she? Perhaps, for her own happiness, it was well that Lassie did not know.

As far as possible Lassie kept with her own children that day--she knew there might be an opportunity of winning some little heart to open its inmost self to her in a way that could not be done in the Sunday school. Nor was she mistaken. Little Phyllis Wilson, an orphan child of ten, who lived with her old grandparents, and was reported to have by no means an easy life, came creeping up to her in the afternoon, and said softly,

"Teacher, I want to tell you something."

So Lassie sat down beside her on the beach, just a little apart from the great throng of merry-makers, who were shouting, paddling, enjoying themselves in every possible way. Drawing the child close to her, Lassie said, "Well, Phyllis, what is it?"

"Teacher, I do want to love Jesus-I think—I mean,—I do love Him, now!"

Lassie's heart was thrilled to its very depths as the childusually so shy and silent-buried her little burning face on her teacher's shoulder.

Phyllis stole away presently back to her companions-and presently her little quiet laugh of joy was ringing out again. Lassie sat on-great joy filling her own heart.

But she little guessed that nearly all that was passed had been overheard.

Close behind her, as she sat down, was one of the low wooden breakwaters-and just on the other side, hidden from view, was stretched at full length upon the beach the figure of a

man.

It was George Champion, the engine-driver. He had been

playing games with the boys till he was utterly tired out, and determined to steal a few moments rest.

Pulling a paper from his pocket he had begun to read when he heard the sound of a child's voice,-confessing she had yielded herself to Christ,-just close beside him.

There was a crack in the boards of the breakwater, and peeping through the gnarled wood and sea-weed the young driver caught sight of the teacher to whom the child was speaking.

With a start he recognized her-it was the new teacher he had noticed on the platform that morning when they started. So she was a soul-winner, just what he longed to be. George Champion fixed his eyes on his magazine-but he was not reading: and every now and then his hand was drawn across his eyes.

A lonely one-like me, I expect! I wish I could get to know her; but how?

By-and-bye the young driver peeped through the break

water again. Lassie was sitting there alone, little guessing she was the object of careful and earnest scrutiny on the part of a pair of dark brown eyes.

Presently, with a little sigh, Lassie rose and went back to play with the children.

But George Champion did not feel like reading any more, somehow.

The day wore on, and evening came. Already the children were streaming towards the station. Only a little time remained and then--the one day's holiday by the sea would be over for another year.

Lassie had her little band of scholars round her-all,

She has not passed me, and I have been waiting here a long time. Besides, I saw her before-going along the front by that part where the tide came in and the waves splash so high."

"I saw her past there alone-she seemed to like to be alone if she could, she is a queer child," said a big girl. "She was along there beyond the houses.

She

"What, towards Pevensey? Oh, what shall we do! will be left behind! I will go and find her. Tell Mr. Carruthers I will try to bring her in time."

Lassie ran off breathless, blaming herself for not keeping more careful watch upon the child.

On she went. Already, as Lassie passed the pier, and went along the front, "where the waves splashed high," she knew it wanted but ten minutes now to train time.

On she ran, and on--at length, fully half a mile further, she found Phyllis Wilson, curled up in a quiet spot fast asleep.

To wake her and rouse her thoroughly was no easy task. The child was exhausted by the long day in the sea air. When at last they started to run Lassie's heart sank: even now the clock was striking, they would be too late.

*

*

*

Meantime at the station Mr. Carruthers looked out anxiously for the missing child and her teacher, until the last moment. Then a tall, broad-shouldered young man stepped up to him.

"I'll wait, sir, if you don't mind, and bring them on by a later train-they will be scared to have missed this and not know what to do!"

Mr. Carruthers did not notice the half-veiled eagerness of George Champion's voice, he only saw a great relief from an anxious burden.

"Thanks, Champion, you are the very man. Lassie Lindsay is a new-comer in our school, and not used to going about, and Phyllis is such a timid child. I shall be quite easy now."

The train with its load of waving, shouting children-more tired, but just as excited as ever-was just on the move.

The engine-driver watched the barriers anxiously, as if really hoping the truants would not come in time.

He actually breathed a great sigh of relief when the train at last moved off.

"Now I shall have an excuse for speaking to her. And that's her name, is it? Lassie-Miss Lindsay!"

A quarter of an hour later, when Lassie, herself almost

tearful, came hurriedly into the station with the sobbing child, a voice at her side said quietly,

"It's all right-don't worry, Miss Lindsay-I have waited to take you back by the next train; we have nearly an hour to wait, won't you sit down and rest?"

And Lassie's pale face flushed ever so slightly, as looking round she came face to face with--the engine-driver. (To be continued.)

で

Death of Mr. E. Brown,

OF CAMBRIDGE.

HE sad news of the death of Mr. Brown, which took place at his residence on February 2nd, in his seventysixth year, will cause deep and widespread regret

among those who are interested in the work of the Railway Mission. For many years Mr. Brown has been one of the most faithful and kind friends of this work, which he loved on account of its simple Gospel character. Since Mrs. Brown undertook the Hon. Superintendence of the Cambridge Branch of the Mission, Mr. Brown has taken an active share in the work. Few meetings have been held in the Railway Mission Hall at which he has not been present, and although he did not often give addresses, his quiet, unselfish and kindly ministry, of seeing that all who attended were comfortable in the Hall, was keenly appreciated, while his earnest pleading with God in the prayer meeting for the salvation of souls, will remain as a precious memory to those who were associated with him in the work. The Railway men owe the beautiful Hall at Cambridge to the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who provided a great part of the money which was needed to purchase the ground and to erect the Hall. While we rejoice in knowing that our beloved friend is with Christ, which is far better," we cannot help mourning the loss of one whose heart was so truly set on the salvation of the railway people at Cambridge. He had endeared himself to all by his beautiful, simple, loving character, and by many acts of kind thoughtfulness. All who knew him were impressed by the quiet restfulness aud yet steady devotion to truth and righteousness which characterised his life. He had the evenness and freedom from worry, which told of

"

"A heart at leisure from itself "

and of a constant walk with God. We thank God for such a life and for the beautiful influence which it exerted. Mr. Brown had a tender heart for the children, among whom he loved to work. The meetings which he conducted every week for children in the Hall were an encouraging and hopeful part of the Mission at Cambridge, and the little ones are sad as they miss their kind and thoughtful friend,

The funeral took place on Monday, February 6th. A number of Railway men acted as bearers. The coffin was taken to the Railway Mission Hall on its way to the cemetery. The Hall was filled with railway people and other friends. Hearts were deeply moved and tears started unbidden as the people saw their devoted leader, Mrs. Brown, sit beside the coffin of her beloved husband, the one who has been for so many years the mainstay and companion of her life and work. In that quiet and solemn time many an unspoken prayer was breathed to God that He would comfort and sustain the sorrowing one, filling her heart with His own peace, and with the blessed hope of reunion in the Home above.

The service was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Selbie, and a brief sympathetic address was given by Mr. Nixon. At the graveside a large number of friends gathered round, sorrowing, but not "as others which have no hope," for all felt that the parting was only for a season, and that soon-perhaps very soon for some-there would be a re-union with their beloved friend in the presence of the Master he had loved so truly and served so well.