When Nesta reached the railway station she was almost beside herself with fear. She went to the ticket office to get a third-class single ticket for Newcastle. There was a girl standing just in front of her, a commonplace, respectable looking girl, who asked for a ticket to a place which she pronounced as Souchester. The ticket only cost one and sixpence. It flashed through Nesta’s mind that she might just as well go to Souchester as anywhere else. It had not before entered into her brain that here lay an immediate source of relief. Perhaps her family would be really frightened when they knew nothing about her, so frightened that when they saw her again, they would forgive her.
Scarcely knowing what she did, and with no previous intention of going anywhere but straight home, she too asked for a ticket to Souchester. The man handed it to her.
“One and sixpence, please,” he said.
She pushed in her half-sovereign, received back eight and sixpence change, which she thought great riches, slipped the money into her purse, put the purse into her pocket, and went on the platform. The man directed her which way to go to catch the Souchester train. She followed the girl who had first put the idea into her mind. This girl looked of the servant class. She was respectably dressed, she carried a parcel wrapped up in brown paper. Nesta felt that between her and that girl there was a sort of link; she could not quite account for it, but she was anxious not to lose sight of her.
“Souchester,” said the man who stood on the platform, taking Nesta’s ticket and examining it, “there you are, Miss, right ahead, that train, that train, Miss, it’s just starting, you be quick if you want to catch it.” Nesta hurried. The girl with the brown paper parcel got into a third-class carriage, Nesta followed her, and a minute later the train was in motion. At first it went slowly, then quickly, and soon the gay town of Scarborough was out of sight, and they were going rapidly between fields full of waving corn, with the blue sea still close at hand.
It so happened that Nesta and the girl with the brown paper parcel were the only two in this special compartment. Nesta looked at her companion; she did not exchange a single word with her, but nevertheless, she was for the time being her guiding star. The girl was essentially commonplace; she was stout, very dumpy in figure, she had a large, full-moon face, small eyes, a wide mouth, and high cheek bones. She wore no gloves, and her hands were coarse and red. Presently she pulled a coarse sandwich, made of two hunches of bread with a piece of bacon in the middle, from her brown paper parcel, and began to eat it deliberately. When she had eaten half, she looked at Nesta. Then taking a knife out of her pocket, she cut a piece from her sandwich and offered it awkwardly, and yet with a good-natured smile, to her fellow traveller. Nesta thanked her, and said she was not hungry.
This incident, however, opened the ball, and Nesta was able to ask what sort of place Souchester was.
“Oh, just a country place,” said the girl. “Be yer going there, Miss?”
“I’m a poor girl just like yourself,” said Nesta. She became suddenly interested. If this was not a real adventure, a real proper running away, she did not know what was.
“I am a poor girl like you,” repeated Nesta, “and I am going to Souchester.”