Angela Brazil

For the Sake of the School Angela Brazil

Stand back there!" yelled a porter, setting down a box with a slam, and motioningthe excited, fluttering group of girls to a position of greater safety than the extremeedge of the platform. "Llangarmon Junction! Change for Glanafon and Graigwen!"Snorting and puffing, as if in agitated apology for the tardiness of its arrival, thetrain came steaming into the station, the drag of its brakes adding yet another itemof noise to the prevailing babel. Intending passengers clutched bags and baskets;fathers of families gave a last eye to the luggage; mothers grasped children firmlyby the hand; a distracted youth, seeking vainly for his portmanteau, upset a stack ofbicycles with a crash; while above all the din and turmoil rose the strident, raspingvoice of a book-stall boy, crying his selection of papers with ear-splitting zeal. From the windows of the in-coming express waved seventeen agitated pockethandkerchiefs, and the signal was answered by a counter-display of cambric fromthe twenty girls hustled back by an inspector in the direction of the weighingmachine.