It was a very tired Annie Brooke who arrived laden with her little bag
late on a certain evening at Norton Paget. The darkness had quite set
in, and when she entered the tiny station and took a third-class ticket
to London she was not recognised.
There were two other girls of an inferior class to Annie going also to
London by the train. She looked at them for a minute, but they did not
know her; and when presently she found herself in the same carriage
with, them, she felt a certain sense of repose in being in their
company. But for the fact that these two girls were accompanying her to
town, she would have given way to quite unreasoning terrors, for her
nerves had been violently shaken by the events of the last fortnight.
Those nerves had been weakened already by all the deceit through which
she had lived now during long weeks. This final step, however, made her
feel almost as though she had reached the breaking-point. She could
have cried out in her fears. She hated the darkness; she hated the
swift movement of the train. She wanted to reach London; and yet when
she did get there she would not have the faintest idea where to go.
With her money securely fastened about her little person, with her neat
leather bag, she might have presented herself at any comfortable hotel
and been sure of a good welcome, but somehow Annie felt afraid of grand
hotels at that moment. She felt deep down, very deep in her heart that
she was nothing more nor less than a runaway, a girl who had done
something to be ashamed of, who was obliged to hide herself, and who was
forced to leave her friends.
She shivered once or twice with cold, and one of the girls who had got
into the same carriage, and who had stared very hard at Annie from time
to time, noticing her great dejection and pallor and her want of any
wraps, suddenly bent forward and said:
"If you please, miss, I have a cloak to spare, and if you're taken with
a chill I'd be very glad to lend it to you to wrap about you."
"Thank you," said Annie instantly. Her small teeth were beginning to
chatter, and she was really glad of the girl's offer.
A few minutes later she was wrapped up in the cloak, and feeling
inexpressibly soothed and knowing that her disguise was now more
effectual than ever, she dropped into an uneasy sleep. She slept for
some time, and when she awoke again she found that the third-class
compartment was full of people--a rough and motley crew--and that the
two girls who had accompanied her into the carriage were both still
present. One faced her; the other sat pressed up close to her side. It
was the girl who had lent Annie the cloak who sat so near her.
"Are you a bit better, miss?" she said when Annie had opened her
startled blue eyes and tried to collect her scattered senses.
"Oh yes," said Annie; "but I am thirsty," she added.
"Suck an orange, then; do," said the girl. "They are a bit sour yet,
but I bought some to-day for the journey."
She immediately thrust her hand into a string bag and produced an unripe
and very untempting-looking specimen of the orange tribe.