Now that the sunlight was no longer on or in the water, the latter had lost its exquisite greenness, and had assumed a sombre tint. The time of the year was March; no buds had burst on the trees. The larch plantations were hesitating, putting forth, indeed, their little blood-purple “strawberry baskets”--their marvellous flower, and ready at the first warm shower to flush into emerald green. The limes, the elms, were red at every spray with rising sap. The meadows, however, were of an intense brilliancy of verdure.
At the mouth of the Teign rose the Ness, a very Bardolph’s nose for rubicundity, and the inflowing tide was warm in colour in places where it flowed over a loosely compacted bank of sand or mud. Thus the river was as a piece of shot silk of two tinctures.
Kate was uncertain whether the train had passed or not. The atmospheric railway had none of the bluster of the steam locomotive. No puffs of vapour like white cotton wool rose in the air to forewarn of a coming train, or, after one had passed, to lie along the course and tell for five minutes that the train had gone by. It uttered no whistle, its breaks produced no jar. Its lungs did not pant and roar. It slid along almost without a sound.
Consequently, Kate, knowing that the ferry-boat had been despatched late, almost expected to find John Pooke stamping and growling on the hard. When, however, she ran the boat aground at the landing-place, she saw that no one was there in expectation.
The girl fastened the little vessel to a ring and went up the river bank in quest of someone who could inform her about the train.
She speedily encountered a labourer with boots red in dust. He, however, could say nothing relative to the down train. After leaving work--“tilling ’taters”--he had been into the public-house at Bishop’s Teignton for his half-pint of ale, to wash the red dust down the redder lane; the train might have gone by while he was refreshing himself; but there was also a probability that it had not. Continuing her inquiries, Kate met a woman who assured her that the train had passed. She had seen it, whilst hanging out some clothes; she had been near enough to distinguish the passengers in the carriages.