THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS CHILDREN CHAPTER I THE news that Miss Ferrars was going to marry Mr. Rowland the engineer, ran through the station like wild-fire, producing a commotion and excitement which had rarely been equalled since the time of the Mutiny. Miss Ferrars! and Mr. Rowland! —it was repeated in every tone of wonder and astonishment, with as many audible notes of admiration and interrogation as would fill a whole page. "Impossible!" people said, "I don't believe it for a moment."-"You don't mean to say- But دو when Mrs. Stanhope, who was Miss Ferrars' friend, with whom she had been living, answered calmly that this was indeed what she meant to say, and that she was not very sure whether she was most sorry or glad-most pleased to think that her friend was thus comfortably established in life, or sorry that she was perhaps stepping a little out of her sphere-there remained nothing for her visitors but a universal gape of amazement, a murmur of deprecation or regret " Oh, poor Miss Ferrars!" the ladies cried. "A lady, of such a good family, and marrying a man who was certainly not a gentleman." "But he is a very good fellow," the gentlemen said; and one or two of the mothers who were conscious in their hearts, though they did not say anything of the fact, that had he proposed for Edie or Ethel, they would have pushed his claims as far as legitimate pressure could go, held their tongues or said little, with a feeling that they had themselves escaped the criticism which was now so freely poured forth. They were aware indeed that it would have come upon them more hotly, for it was they who would have been blamed in the case of Ethel or Edie, whereas Miss Ferrars was responsible for herself. But the one of them who would have been most guilty, and who indeed had thought a good deal about Mr. Rowland, and considered the question very closely whether she ought not as a matter of duty to B |