The Three Graces stepped in, the engine whistled. But a porter rushed past, pushing before him, with a rumbling like thunder, a huge trunk on a barrow. Thea turned her head and a name in scarlet letters caught her eyes: “Miss Lily!” And, running after the trunk, magnificently bedecked, in a hat all feathers and gold tassels, who? What? Lily! Lily herself, red and out of breath, leading her bike with one hand, carrying an umbrella in the other, and Glass-Eye, her arms stretched wide with parcels, following in her train! Just time to throw her bike to the porter in the luggage-van and quick, quick, Lily came scudding back, hustled along by the train-master! She would have missed the start, were it not for Thea, who opened the door and, with her arms of steel, gripped her as she passed:
“Hullo, Lily! That’s a good girl! Quick!”
Lily leaped into the carriage with a bound. Glass-Eye, entangled in her parcels, had, amid general laughter, to be dragged by main force, through the narrow doorway, like a piece of luggage. Oof, just in time ... Off they were!
In the railway-carriage was nothing but gaiety and handshaking and ingenuous questions:
“Traveling by yourself? Where’s Trampy? And your Pa and Ma? So you’re not dead, eh?”
“Certainly not,” said Lily. “If they had come to annoy me at the station, I’d have shown them if I was alive or dead! I was ready for them!”
And she brandished her umbrella.
Then she had to make herself comfortable, to find room for all her belongings as best she could. Lily pushed Glass-Eye about, like a fine lady used to being waited on:
“Here, take my hat, Glass-Eye; hang it up. Take my wrist-bag. Wait, give me my handkerchief first!”
To look at Lily, all fresh and rosy, one would never have suspected the trials she had passed through, but a few days ago. Still quite flustered with that hurried departure, she smiled as she watched the Three Graces, who, on their side, were carefully folding up their cloaks. And the train rushed on, rushed on through deep cuttings, dashed through deserted stations ... and then, suddenly, entered a tunnel. Lily, but for the noise of the wheels, would have seen herself as she had been that night. Oh, she would never forget it! It clutched at her heart. She clenched her fists with anger. Turned out by Trampy! Insulted by her Ma! Flouted by Jimmy, that mean cur! Oh, when she left his place, a few days ago, she felt like a madwoman! Her first idea was to disappear, to take a header into the black water! But, ugh, the mud, the cold! And then the hospital, with those people who cut you up! She must also show Pa and Ma whether it was through her gentlemen friends that she meant to earn more by herself alone than they and all their rotten troupe put together. Perhaps Pa and Ma would come to her, one day, to beg their bread! But Ma must first ask Lily’s pardon on her knees. On her knees, damn it! And, in despair, inwardly raging, her chest aching with grief and spite, Lily, penniless, but brave for all that and ready for the fray, returned to her hotel, where, to her great surprise, she found some one waiting for her, with a parcel in her hand.