Part 6

I got quite awake getting my hat down from the rack, and almost directly after we arrived at King’s Cross. There was a great rush and bustle, and only one or two cabs, so it’s lucky the other excursion people didn’t all want them; every one seemed to be walking. I thought I’d better make haste, though, so I said to one cabman, “Are you engaged?” and when he said “No,” I jumped in quickly.

Well, I expected that he’d start at once, but he didn’t. I waited a minute or two, then I poked open the little hole, which is rather difficult to do because it’s so high. I said, “Will you tell your horse to go, please?”

He looked most astonished. He said, “You ain’t all alone?” I said “Yes.” Then he was very cross. He said “Come, now, get out of this.” I remembered then that I hadn’t told him where to go to, and I thought that might be making him so disagreeable. I said, “I beg your pardon for not telling you that I want to go to Waterloo Station, and I want to start at once, please.”

The man seemed to get more surprised still. He said (I can’t help it, it’s sounding dreadful, but it’s what he really did say)--he said, “Well, I’m blessed!” Then he called out to a porter, but the porter was too busy to hear him.

I didn’t know what to do because he didn’t seem to be even beginning to start. Then I remembered that when we were at Cousin Sophy’s the cabman wouldn’t drive us back from the pantomime because he said Chiswick was too far. So I poked open the little hole again, and I said, “You are on the rank plying for hire, and unless you start immediately I shall summons you.” That was what Cousin Sophy said; Humph and I have often acted it since, because the cabman was so angry and there was such an exciting fuss.

This cabman wasn’t angry, though; he just seemed to get more and more astonished. He began to laugh, and he said again, “Well, I’m blessed!” Then he said, “You ain’t running away, are you, Missy?”

I said “No.” I think that was true, because it isn’t exactly running away when you have been told that you are to go the next day in any case. I said, “I am just travelling home to my Mother.”

That seemed to decide him more. He was going to start, when he thought of something else to worry over. He called down, “But ’ow about my fare, Missy?”

I had been rather troubled about that myself. I’d got the half-crown for him, of course, and the ticket home from Waterloo is only one-and-five-pence-halfpenny, so he could have another halfpenny out of the sixpence with the hole in it, as well as my bright farthing. But I wasn’t sure if even all that was enough. Cabs are so dreadfully expensive, Mother always says; and Father says one oughtn’t to be stingy. So I just explained it to the cabman. I said, “I’ve got half-a-crown for you, and a halfpenny out of the sixpence with a hole in it, and a bright farthing; and if you’ll drive me as far as you can for that without me being stingy, I’ll walk the rest.” I knew there couldn’t be very much further to go, anyway.

The cabman, though, was most nice. He said, “The ’alf-crown will do nicely for me, Missy. You can keep the rest.” Then we really did drive off.

I did like it in the cab, and the streets were all bright with the lights. A clock we passed said it was ten minutes to twelve; wasn’t that an astonishing time? When we got to Waterloo I jumped out and gave the cabman his money. He said, “Shall you find the lady all right?” I said “Yes.” I think he would have said more, only just at that minute some one waved to him from the opposite side of the road.

There weren’t very many people in the station, but they all stared very rudely, and some looked as if they were going to speak. So I hurried on as fast as I could to the place where you get the tickets. I knew there was a train in the middle of the night, you see, because Father comes down by it sometimes after parties. The little window for buying the tickets was open. (I can reach up to it quite easily on tiptoe; Humphrey can’t, he’d have to take a footstool if he travelled alone.) I said, “One half-third single to Farncombe.”

Well, the gentleman there looked as surprised as the cabman. He said “What?” quite crossly. I thought it was because I hadn’t said “please,” but he wasn’t a bit nicer when I did. Then some other people came near, and that seemed to make the gentleman in the little hole less surprised. He punched my ticket and gave it to me, and he said, “I suppose your Mother has a season ticket?” I said, “No, Father has.” I didn’t know why he asked, but I think now he thought that I belonged to the people who were standing there. It was very silly of him, for the lady wasn’t the least bit like Mother; she looked horrid.

I know the platform from which our trains mostly start, besides a good many other people were going along as well. I heard one lady say, “Who does that little girl belong to?” And the gentleman said, “Oh, to that lot, I think.” It made me very cross that everybody should mistake the horrid lady for Mother, but I didn’t like to explain. Somebody else, too, asked me if I were lost, but I said, very hard, “No.”

It was so uncomfortable, people talking to me like this, that I got into the first empty carriage that I saw. I got under the seat, too, so that they’d be less likely to bother me with questions. It isn’t nice when every one is so astonished and cross at you.

I liked it under the seat, but I was so afraid that it was naughty. I did hope that Mother wouldn’t mind. You see, she always says that I am so careless about my clothes, and that it is unkind to Violet, who has to wear them when I have grown out of them. It does seem hard on Violet, certainly, because she never spoils anything herself. I think she’d look neat on a desert island. She really ought to have been born an eldest. It made it worse, too, because I was wearing my titums. I suppose every one knows that a titums is your middle-best dress; the others are hitums and scrub.

Of course, I didn’t stop under the seat all the time, or else I might have passed the station. I thought afterwards that it was lucky no one got into the carriage, because grown-up people are so easily astonished, and they might have thought it funny when I came crawling out. We only stopped twice before we got to Farncombe, which made it easier, and I had lots of time to plan what I’d do when we got there. First of all, though, I tried if both doors of the compartment were unlocked, because that was part of the plan. They were. I began to feel like the Young Pretender after Culloden.

Well, it all went beautifully. As the train slowed down to go into Farncombe Station I jumped out of the door on the other side to our platform. Then I ran across the line and crouched down by the hedge until the train had gone off again and everything was quiet. I did this because the station-master and all the people at Farncombe know us, and I thought there’d be more fuss. Besides, the station-master is a most disagreeable man.

I knew there was a hole in the hedge just there, because Humph and I discovered it one day when Fräulein took us to meet Mother; she’d missed her train, and so we had to wait a long time. It wasn’t true, though, that Humph and I first made that hole, like the station-master said; it was there all the time, though it may have got a teeny bit larger, but then holes are things that grow fast, like in sheets, but ’specially with woollen gloves. Anyway it was a good thing now that it had got big, because I was able to find it quite easily and to scramble through into the field. Nobody saw me, so after waiting a few minutes more I walked across and got over the stile into the road.

I had quite forgotten that it would be dark for this walk, when I planned to come home at Mrs. Charlton’s. If I had remembered, I might not have started, because of thinking that Mother would not like it, but I should never have guessed that it would be so horrid in itself. It wasn’t pitch black either, like it sometimes is. I’m not sure it wasn’t worse, because it was light enough to see all sorts of dreadful black things all round, and once you get quite outside Farncombe there aren’t any more lights or houses at all. It was so quiet, too, there wasn’t a sound. All at once I began to think of mad dogs and St. Denis. I thought, suppose there was some one coming after me, holding his head in his hands and looking down at it with his bleeding neck, like in the picture. I wanted to run dreadfully, but I wouldn’t let myself, because if you once start, something seems to come after you that will clutch you with long, clawy fingers if you stop. I thought of Mother instead, as hard as ever I could, and I’d got the penwiper on still, so I held that through my clothes. That made it rather better.

Suddenly I saw something in the road moving. I could hardly breathe. It was awful. But then it came nearer, and I saw it was just an ordinary man. He had on his head quite all right. He said “Hullo!” and I said “Good-evening.”

I didn’t think he was a very nice man, though; for he came up quite close in rather a rude way. He caught hold of me and said, “That’s a nice brooch you’ve got on,” and I said, “Yes; Father gave it to me last birthday. It’s real gold.”

The man didn’t answer because just then we heard wheels coming. He listened for a minute and then he dashed away into the bushes. The carriage was really on the upper road, so he needn’t have minded. I didn’t tell that to him, because I didn’t like him much. It was kind of him, though, to admire my brooch. He was only a common sort of man, so I dare say he’d never been taught manners and things.

I felt much better and more comfortable after meeting the man. I got almost directly to where our short cut through the copse begins, and that made it seem more like home. I thought that I could let myself begin to run there, because it’s such a little way, but all the same I did feel frightened before I got to the house. I rushed up to the front door and tugged at the handle. It was locked!

Well, of course, I might have known that it would be, but at the time it seemed the worst thing of all. I began screaming out “Mother, Mother!” and I was all shaking and crying, I don’t know why. Almost before you’d have thought there was time, the door was pulled back and Mother had hold of me.

After that it was all right, of course, and almost too nice to tell. Mother had come running down just as she was, though she said afterwards that she hadn’t really believed that it could be me, and had thought that she was dreaming it all. She carried me up and undressed me and put me into her own bed. I was still rather silly, for I didn’t seem to be able to say anything, only a line I’d read kept going on inside my head about “Port after stormy seas.”

Presently, though, Mother began to ask me questions. She kept asking me if I had really come all the way alone, as if she could hardly believe it. Each time I said “Yes” she cuddled me again. Then she asked me if Mrs. Charlton knew; so I ’splained about it. Mother didn’t say anything hardly then, but she wrote a telegram for Mrs. Charlton to say that I’d arrived safely, and she put it for the gardener to take to the post-office the first thing in the morning. Mother got me some milk, and some cake, which I ate while she went in for a minute to see Humph. I forgot to say that of course I’d asked about him at the beginning, and Mother said that he had got much better the last day. Fräulein was with him, so Mother didn’t have to stay. She came back to me, and I was so happy it seemed to make me sleepy all at once. It was almost too lovely to feel that Mother was quite close to me.

The next day it wasn’t so nice, though. Mother talked to me a long time, and she said a thing that made me feel dreadfully bad; she said I’d been selfish; I’d thought of my own feelings but not of other people’s. She said that fortunately Mrs. Charlton had not discovered my absence until the next morning, but if she had done so she would have been extremely worried, and, at her age, it might have made her quite ill. Also she’d have telegraphed home, and Mother says had she known that I was wandering about the country by myself all night, she could hardly have borne it, especially when Humphrey was so ill and Father away. I minded that part much more than about Mrs. Charlton. Mother looked so unhappy, it was dreadful. I promised and promised I’d never do such a thing again.

That wasn’t all the disagreeables either. The next day a letter came from Cousin Sophy in London, asking me and the little ones to stay with her. She’d been abroad before, and so had only just heard of Humph’s having measles. Well, Mother wrote to Jane, who was away in lodgings with the little ones, to tell her to take them to Cousin Sophy’s at the end of the week, because Mother knew that they’d like it better. But with regard to me, Mother said she hardly liked to trust me away from home again.

I minded the not being trusted part, but I didn’t mind the not going so much when Mother told me, because it seemed so nice to stop at home with her. But it wasn’t really; it was a great deal horrider than I could have ’magined. I hardly saw Mother at all because she was looking after Humphrey all the time, and I wasn’t allowed to go in to him. As for Fräulein, she was most strict and disagreeable. And then when Violet wrote she said that Cousin Sophy had taken them to the Zoo and the Chamber of Horrors, and lots of other lovely places. I did feel cross.

They are back now, though, and Humph is well, and everything is nice. I’ve quite settled not to go visiting strangers alone again--no, not as long as I live. The others are so interested in my adventures, though, that it almost makes one forget how horrid they really were. Perhaps the lovely things you read in books are really like that, and even being a cowboy mayn’t be always nice. And I do think a journey like mine would be too dreadful for any one if Mother weren’t waiting for them at the end of it.

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.

SOME DAINTY GIFT BOOKS.

TUFFY AND THE MERBOO

BY PHYLLIS M. GOTCH,

Author of “The Romance of a Boo-Bird Chic.”

Seventeen Full-page Coloured Pictures.

_Large 4to_, =6s.=

THE CINEMATOGRAPH TRAIN

BY G. E. FARROW,

Author of the “Wallypug of Why.”

Thirty Drawings by ALAN WRIGHT.

_Large Crown 8vo_, =5s.=

THE GIANT CRAB

BY W. H. D. ROUSE.

Profusely Illustrated by CHARLES ROBINSON.

_Square Crown 8vo_, =3s. 6d.=

R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON, 4, ADAM STREET, STRAND, LONDON; and 3, FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.

FROM THE AUTUMN LIST.

LESSONS

BY EVELYN SHARP,

Author of “Wynips,” etc., etc.

Sketches of Child Life and Character.

_Crown 8vo_, =2s. 6d.= _net_.

ENGLAND: A NATION

BEING

The Papers of the Patriots’ Club

EDITED BY LUCIAN OLDERSHAW.

_Crown 8vo_, =3s. 6d.= _net_.

Contributors:

G. K. CHESTERTON, Rev. CONRAD NOEL, H. W. NEVINSON, REGINALD BRAY, J. L. HAMMOND, C. F. G. MASTERMAN, and R. C. K. ENSOR.

YOUNG ENGLAND

BEING

Vivian Grey, Coningsby, Sybil, Tancred

BY BENJAMIN DISRAELI.

4 Vols. _Large Crown 8vo, each_ =5s.= _net_.

Edited by B. LANGDON DAVIES.

Illustrated by BYAM SHAW.

J. T. NETTLESHIP

In Memoriam

EDITED BY W. ROTHENSTEIN.

Twenty-four beautiful reproductions of his early symbolic and late animal work.

Appreciations by W. B. YEATS, Professor ANDREW BRADLEY, A. E. JOHN, and H. MCILVAINE.

R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.