“Nine-ten.”
That was better! Nine-ten. If she could manage to travel by that train she would arrive at the terminus in abundance of time to prevent any one starting by the next stopping train. It was all easy—perfectly easy, except for the want of a miserable eightpence, but, alas! for the moment eightpence seemed as inaccessible as eighty pounds. Darsie bent a scrutinising glance upon the porter’s downcast face. “He looks about as disagreeable as he can be, but he’s a human creature; he must have some heart! Perhaps he’s in trouble, too, and it’s soured his disposition. It would mine! I just hate it when things go wrong. I don’t in the least see why I shouldn’t have a ticket on account! I’ll see what I can do.”
She coughed and ventured tentatively—
“I missed the last train.”
“Did ye!” said the porter coldly. It was not a question; there was no flicker of the interest of a question in his voice, only a dreary indifference which seemed to demand what in the world you were thinking of to trouble him about a stupidity which had happened twenty times a day throughout twenty years of his service on the line. Darsie drew herself up with a feeling of affront. He was a rude, ill-mannered man, who ought to be taught how to speak to ladies in distress. She would ask her father to complain to the railway!
What were porters paid for but to make themselves useful to passengers? She drew herself up in haughty fashion, then as suddenly collapsed as her eye rested on her dusty boots and blackened, bloodstained skirt. Ridiculous to act the grand lady with such handicaps as these! She drew a sharp breath, and said in a voice of childlike appeal—
“I’m left behind! My friends have gone on. It’s very awkward!”
“Are ye?” asked the porter indifferently. He took one hand out of his pocket and pointed woodenly to the right. “Waiting-room first door. Ye can sit there!”
Of all the callous, cold-blooded—! Darsie turned with a swing and marched forward into the bleak little cell which had the audacity to call itself a first-class waiting-room, seated herself on a leather-covered bench which seemed just the most inhospitable thing in the way of furniture which the mind of man could conceive, and gave herself up to thought. Never, never so long as she lived would she ever again leave home without some money in her pocket! How in the name of all that was mysterious could she contrive to possess herself of eightpence within the next hour? “Our old woman” would lend it with pleasure, but Darsie shrank from the idea of the darkening country road with the dread of the town-dweller who in imagination sees a tramp lurking behind every bush. No, this first and most obvious suggestion must be put on one side, and even if she could have humbled herself to beg from the porter, Darsie felt an absolute conviction that he would refuse. At the farther side of the station there stretched a small straggling village. Surely somehow in that village—! With a sudden inspiration Darsie leaped to her feet and approached the porter once more. Into her mind had darted the remembrance of the manner in which poor people in books possessed themselves of money in critical moments of their history.
“Porter, will you please tell me the way to the nearest pawnshop?”