Dot and the Train That Couldn’t Say Goodnight
Dot was the youngest signal-keeper on the line, and she could whistle through her fingers louder than anyone in Muddle-on-the-Hill. She could whistle a cow round from the far end of a field. She could whistle a hat back onto a head before it had finished blowing off. Her mom had told her it was far too loud for indoors. Her gran had told her. Mrs. Pocket the stationmaster had told her twice, once for each ear.
So Dot whistled outdoors, at cows and hats, and indoors she hummed.
Now, in Muddle-on-the-Hill nothing can fall asleep until it has said goodnight in its own way. The gates creak it. The kettles sigh it. The hill rumbles it once, at the very end of dusk. The hill is so tall that the dusk takes ages to slide off the top of it. Everything says goodnight in its own way, and an engine says it with a whistle. And once a thing has said its goodnight, nothing at all can wake it till morning.
So that no engine ever ran short of a goodnight, Mrs. Pocket kept the whistles in jam jars. Each engine got a hundred a day, in a jar with its name on the label. Every evening Mrs. Pocket took the pencil from behind her ear and counted what was left. A jar of whistles looks like a jar of nothing much, but if you hold it to your ear, it hums.
One evening, as Dot was setting her signal lamp from green to red, the Night Train came in. It was a round little green engine. It was called the Night Train because it was always the first engine in bed. It took the milk round the hills each morning, and all along the way it whistled hello to every cow it passed.
Mrs. Pocket picked up its jar. The jar did not hum. She shook it, and she held it up to the lamp, and there was nothing inside but a little fog on the glass.
“There are ninety-nine cows between here and the top of the hill,” said Mrs. Pocket.
The Night Train looked at its wheels.
“And one of them is new,” said Dot, who knew all the cows. “So it said hello to her twice.”
“That makes a hundred,” said Mrs. Pocket. “And not one left for goodnight.”
The Night Train tried anyway. It puffed itself up and pushed, and out of its whistle came a small, polite cough. It could not say goodnight, so it could not go to sleep, and a train that cannot go to sleep cannot keep still. It rolled backwards out of the station, then forwards, then off up the line and round the hill, chuff, chuff, chuff, wide awake.
A sensible person would say: open tomorrow’s jar. Mrs. Pocket was a very sensible person, and she had a rule about that. Tomorrow’s whistles are for tomorrow, and tomorrow starts at midnight, and not a minute before.
“And the milk goes at five,” said Mrs. Pocket, looking at the clock. “If that engine chuffs about till midnight, it will be no good to anybody in the morning. Somebody will have to find it a goodnight to borrow.”
Dot was already buttoning her coat.
The next time the Night Train came round, she set her signal to red. It stopped, because it was a good engine even when it could not sleep. Dot climbed up into the cab.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll find you one.”
The first stop up the line is Always-Thursday, where it is always Thursday. Thursday is washing day, so the washing is always out. The Night Train chuffed along under lines of sheets and shirts and stockings, all of them white in the moonlight.
On the step of the last house sat a kettle. In Always-Thursday the kettle is always on, because washing wants hot water, and this one had been on since the very first Thursday.
“Have you got a goodnight to spare?” said Dot.
“Have a sigh,” said the kettle. “I’ve sighed all day. Everything says goodnight in its own way, and mine is a sigh.”
Dot held the kettle up to the Night Train’s funnel, and the kettle sighed into it, long and steamy. The Night Train took the sigh in and blew it out of its whistle.
It came out as a sigh. A sigh is a lovely goodnight for a kettle. From a train, it sounds like somebody being asked to tidy their room. The Night Train was no sleepier at all.
“Wrong sort,” said Dot. She thanked the kettle and put it back on its step, and they went on.
After Always-Thursday the line crosses the valley on Biscuit Viaduct. It is made of ginger biscuit, which is the strongest kind, and engines cross it slowly so as not to make crumbs. At the far end there is a gate onto the field path, and the gate was still awake, swinging a little on its hinges.
“You can have my creak,” said the gate. “Everything says goodnight in its own way.”
It creaked, and the Night Train caught the creak and blew it out of its whistle. The creak came out so small that Dot had to lean right out of the cab to hear it. It rattled about in the whistle like a pea in a tin, and then it stopped.
“That’s too small to count,” said Dot, and she knew Mrs. Pocket would say the same. The Night Train blinked its lamp at her, still wide awake.
The gate creaked once more, for itself, and fell asleep with its latch undone. Dot hopped down and latched it, so the cows would stay where they were. Then they went on up the hill.
They passed the ninety-nine cows, all lying down in their field like ninety-nine sofas. The Night Train lifted a tiny puff of steam at the new one, out of habit, very quietly.
At the top there was still a stripe of dusk left, pale and pink, waiting to slide off.
“You can have my rumble,” said the hill. It had a slow, deep voice that came up through the rails. “I haven’t used it yet.”
“But it’s your only one,” said Dot.
“I don’t mind,” said the hill. “I’ll just stay up.”
Dot thought about the hill staying up all night with nobody to talk to, with the cows asleep on its back and the line wound round it like a scarf. “No, thank you,” she said. “Everything says goodnight in its own way, and that one’s yours.”
They started for home. Behind them the last of the dusk slid off the top of the hill, and the hill rumbled its goodnight, one long, low rumble that made the rails hum and the lamp jiggle. Then it was asleep.
Dot was out of ideas. The Night Train chuffed slower and slower. It was nearly too tired to be awake, and still it could not sleep.
Dot looked at her two fingers.
She had never once whistled after dark, in case she woke the whole town. But everything on the hill had said its goodnight now. And an engine says goodnight with a whistle, and the loudest whistle in Muddle-on-the-Hill was on the end of her own two fingers.
She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled her loudest whistle.
It went over the sleeping cows and over Biscuit Viaduct and round the hill and back again. Not a crumb fell. The Night Train opened its whistle wide and caught it, and then it blew it out again, long and round and bright, the biggest goodnight it had ever said.
Its lamp went soft. It rolled down the last of the hill and into the station and into its shed, and it fell asleep on the spot, so fast that Dot had to climb out of the cab on tiptoe.
Mrs. Pocket was waiting at the door with her coat over her nightie and the pencil behind her ear.
“I heard that from the kitchen,” said Mrs. Pocket.
Dot waited to be told off.
Mrs. Pocket looked at the sleeping engine. “Fit for the milk,” she said. Then she went into the office and took down a brand-new jar. On the label she wrote SPARE GOODNIGHTS, and underneath it she wrote DOT.
“One, please,” said Mrs. Pocket, and held out the jar. “Not quite so loud.”
Dot whistled into it, a middling sort of whistle. Mrs. Pocket screwed the lid on quick, held the jar to her ear, and smiled. Then she took the pencil from behind her ear and wrote a big 1 on the label, because a count is a count.
“For emergencies,” she said, and put it on the shelf with the others.
Dot walked home under the moon. There was a lamp in her window. At her own front door she stopped, put two fingers in her mouth, and whistled the softest whistle she had ever whistled. It hardly got as far as the doormat. It was exactly the right amount for indoors.
“Goodnight, Dot,” said Mom, from upstairs. She had been waiting up to say it.
Everything in Muddle-on-the-Hill says goodnight in its own way, and that was Dot’s. She went up to bed and was asleep before her second sock was off.