It all fell out as if the fates had arranged things for Hugo. They saw very few people in the village; only one old woman accompanied them in the bus; he heard his father ask for a ticket to the junction, and they arrived without incident of any kind.
The junction, however, was busy. There were quite a lot of people, and when Hugo went to the ticket-office he had to stand in a queue of others while Tony waited outside the long row.
Suddenly Tony began to wonder why his father should go to the ticket-office at all to inquire for
a parcel. Tony was observant, and just because everything was so different from things in India small incidents were impressed upon his mind. If his father was going on anywhere else, he wasn't going; for Peter had promised to take them out in his car again that afternoon. When Hugo reached the window of the ticket-office Tony heard something about Paddington.
That decided him. Nothing would induce him to go to Paddington.
He pushed his way among the crowd and ran for dear life up the stairs, and over the bridge to the other platform where the train for Amber Guiting was still waiting, lonely and deserted. He knew that train. It went up and down all day, for Amber Guiting was the terminus. No one was on the platform as he ran along. With the sure instinct of the hunted he passed the carriages with their shut doors. Right at the end was a van with empty milk-cans. He had seen a porter putting them in the moment the train stopped. Tony darted into the van and crouched down between the milk-cans and the wall. He thought of getting into one of them. The story of Morgiana and the Forty Thieves was clear in his mind, for Meg had told it to them the night before. But the cans were so high and narrow he decided that it was impossible. Someone slammed the door of the van. There came a bump and a jar, and the train moved out onto a siding till it should go back to Amber Guiting when the 1.30 from London came in. Tony sat quite still in the dark, stuffy van. His little heart
was beating with hammer strokes against his ribs, but his face expressed nothing but scorn.
Again his father had lied to him. Again he had said he was going to do one thing when he fully intended to do another. The pleasantness, the kindliness, the apparent desire for Tony's society were a cheat. Tony spoke rapidly to himself in Hindustani, and by the time he had finished expressing his views Hugo Tancred hadn't a shred of character left.
He didn't know when the train would go back to Amber Guiting. It might not be till evening. Tony could wait. Some time it would go back, and once in that dear, safe place all would be well.
He disliked the sound of Paddington; it had to do with London, he knew. He didn't mind London, but he wasn't going there with his father, and no Meg and no Jan and no little Fay and no kind sahibs who were real sahibs.