One Last Look
Edith Nesbit brings down the curtain on ‘The Railway Children’.
1905
King Edward VII 1901-1910
Edith Nesbit brings down the curtain on ‘The Railway Children’.
1905
King Edward VII 1901-1910
Most novelists agonise over their opening line. Edith Nesbit’s opener for The Railway Children (1905) wasn’t bad, but her final page takes the breath away. You will recall that three suburban children have moved with their mother to a small cottage near a railway line, after some men took their well-to-do father away one night in a most cloak-and-dagger fashion.
“I knew something wonderful was going to happen,” said Bobbie, as they went up the road, “but I didn’t think it was going to be this. Oh, my Daddy, my Daddy!”
“Then didn’t Mother get my letter?” Father asked.
“There weren’t any letters this morning. Oh! Daddy! it is really you, isn’t it?” The clasp of a hand she had not forgotten assured her that it was.
“You must go in by yourself, Bobbie, and tell Mother quite quietly that it’s all right. They’ve caught the man who did it. Everyone knows now that it wasn’t your Daddy.”
“I always knew it wasn’t,” said Bobbie. “Me and Mother and our old gentleman.”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s all his doing. Mother wrote and told me you had found out. And she told me what you’d been to her. My own little girl!” They stopped a minute then.
And now I see them crossing the field. Bobbie goes into the house, trying to keep her eyes from speaking before her lips have found the right words to “tell Mother quite quietly” that the sorrow and the struggle and the parting are over and done, and that Father has come home.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What did Roberta’s father ask her to do?
Tell her mother that Daddy was home.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Roberta’s father came home. His wife was not expecting him. He sent Roberta to tell her.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IIdea. IINews. IIIPrepare.