The Railway Children

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I. The beginning of things. II. Peter's coal-mine. III. The old gentleman. IV. The engine-burglar. V. Prisoners and captives. VI. Saviours of the train. VII. For valour. VIII. The amateur fireman. IX. The pride of Perks. X. The terrible secret. XI. The hound in the red jersey. XII. What Bobbie brought home. XIII. The hound's grandfather. XIV. The End.

They were not railway children to begin with. I don't suppose they had ever thought about railways except as a means of getting to Maskelyne and Cook's, the Pantomime, Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's. They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bath-room with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and 'every modern convenience', as the house-agents say.