the most comfortable corner of the dreary waiting-room, and saying shortly, "I'm going to look after the luggage and to hunt up Bertram. He must have overslept himself if he's not here yet. You all wait here quietly till I come back," disappeared in the direction of the luggage-room.
Mrs. Marton did not speak either. She drew Gladys nearer her, and put her arm round the little girl as if to protect her against the disappointment which she felt was coming. Gladys sat perfectly silent. What she was expecting, or fearing, or even thinking, I don't believe she could have told. She had only one feeling that she could have put into words, "Everything is quite different from what I thought. It isn't at all like going to Papa."
But poor little Roger tugged at Léonie, who was next him.
"What are we waiting here in this ugly house for?" he said. "Can't we go to Papa and have our chocolate?"
Léonie stooped down and said something to soothe him, and after a while he grew drowsy again, and his little head dropped on to her shoulder. And so they sat for what seemed a terribly long time. It was more than half an hour, till at last Mr. Marton appeared again.
"I've only just got out that luggage," he said. "What a detestable plan that registering it is! And now I've got it I don't know what to do with it, for – "
"Has he not come?" interrupted his wife.
Mr. Marton glanced at Gladys. She did not seem to be listening.
"Not a bit of him," he replied. "I've hunted right through the station half a dozen times, and it's an hour and a half since the train was due. It cannot be some little delay. It's a pretty kettle of fish and no mistake."
Mrs. Marton's blue eyes gazed up in her husband's face with a look of the deepest anxiety.
"What is to be done?" she said.
CHAPTER IV
"WHAT IS TO BE DONE?"
"That is the question."
Yes, "what was to be done?" That was certainly the question. Mr. Marton looked at his wife for a moment or two without replying. Then he seemed to take a sudden resolution.
"We can't stay here all the morning, that's about all I can say at present," he said. "Come along, we'd better go to the nearest hotel and think over matters."
So off they all set again – Mr. Marton and the rugs, Mrs. Marton and Gladys, Léonie and Roger – another porter being got hold of to bring such of the bags, etc., as were not left at the station with the big luggage. Gladys walked along as if in a dream; she did not even wake up to notice the great wide street and all the carriages, and omnibuses, and carts, and people as they crossed to the hotel in front of the station. She hardly even noticed that all the voices about her were talking in a language she did not understand – she was completely dazed – the only words which remained clearly in her brain were the strange ones which Mr. Marton had made use of – "a pretty kettle of fish and no mistake." "No mistake," that must mean that Papa's not coming to the station was not a mistake, but that there was some reason for it. But "a kettle of fish," what could that have to do with it all? She completely lost herself in puzzling about it. Why she did not simply ask Mrs. Marton to explain it I cannot tell. Perhaps the distressed anxious expression on that young lady's own face had something to do with her not doing so.
Arrived at the hotel, and before a good fire in a large dining-room at that early hour quite empty, a slight look of relief came over all the faces. It was something to get warmed at least! And Mr. Marton ordered the hot chocolate for which Roger had been pining, before he said anything else. It came almost at once, and Léonie established the children at one of the little tables, drinking her own coffee standing, that she might attend to them and join in the talking of her master and mistress if they wished it.
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