She made me feel that I was hindering, not helping, as I tried to tuck in the bed-clothes.

When she had gone and I was alone by the fire, I took up my cousin’s novel and began to read. It was about rich people in Mexico who built a sort of baroque palace and had a chapel full of rococo saints. The mother of the family liked oak beams and warming-pans and copper kettles, but her children would not let her have any of these. They made her have a bedroom with salmon-pink velvet curtains, silver-framed mirrors all over the walls, and ostrich plumes on the canopy over her bed. They built imitation classical ruins in the garden.

I put the book down and began to undress. I did not feel at all well. The medicines had upset me even more, and I was terrified at the thought of going back to school.

I watched the fire-light playing on the ceiling. The heavy curtains were drawn back and I could see the red-dark glow of London through the chink. Sometimes a taxi passed in the street. I tried not to think.

         

My aunt had brought some of my clothes with her from the country, so that I was able to change in the morning. I buttoned up the trousers of my blue suit. Soon I would have to change again, into tails and a butterfly collar. I could not bear to think of it. There seemed no fear in anyone’s mind that I would run away again, and I knew they were right. It could never happen again.

My cousin was nice to me at breakfast, seeing how unhappy I was. She said comforting things and told me how short the term would seem.

My aunt asked for Mr. Day’s address so that she could return the pound, and I also gave her the ticket to redeem my watch from the pawnshop.

I did not leave until after lunch, when Miss Billings drove me to St. Pancras alone. I was thankful that no one else had come with me. I sat next to her in the front of the car and watched her knees. Just hidden by the dark blue skirt, they shifted and rustled like animals in a wood.

A Frenchwoman was buying a basket of fruit inside the station. She was annoyed because the girl behind the counter could not understand her. She gave me an imploring look and I wanted to help, but I suddenly thought that she might be a prostitute, so I hurried away.

Not many people seemed to be going to Derbyshire. The two others in my compartment spoke with Midland accents. They were going home.

I tried to let the jogging of the train send me to sleep. I sat in my corner, only half conscious, until we reached Derby. Something had contracted inside me by now. I changed trains mechanically like an empty ball, rolling from one place to another.

As I moved along the platform I suddenly caught sight of Taylour, who had been at school and had left to learn engineering. He was working with the railway company, and he came up to me now and told me how he hated it.

“What a lucky devil you are,” he said, “to be going back!”

I would have given almost anything to change places with him. A part of me suddenly whispered, “Why not run away again ?” but I put it away and got into the carriage.

As it moved out of the station I looked back, and saw Taylour standing forlornly amongst the trucks and engines.

         

The platform at Willington was drowned in rain. I walked down the sloping ramp, carrying my suitcase and wondering whether to take a taxi to Repton or to walk.