I ran to buy my ticket.

I was small, so I took off my hat, ruffled my hair and asked for a half-fare. The clerk’s glasses glistened and his mouth snapped, “How old are you?” I lied very firmly, and at last he pushed the green ticket through the little window.

I walked past the barrier and up the platform. It was a corridor train, and as it pulled out I went to the lavatory and locked myself in. I knew that nobody could be looking for me yet, but I felt safer there.

I thought of my brother Paul waiting at St. Pancras, then going without me at last.

We had come to London in the morning, from our grandfather’s house in Sussex. We always spent the holidays there. We had both wanted to do different things, so we parted, arranging to meet again at the station in the afternoon.

He was eighteen, two years older than I was. I wondered what he would think if he knew that I was in a train going the opposite way.

I suddenly felt terribly glad. I looked at my face in the glass. I was so anxious and happy that I thought I looked mad. I pulled my hat this way and that, wondering how to disguise myself. I thought I might dress up as a woman if I could get any clothes. I knocked the dent out of my hat, making it look like a girl’s riding-hat. I was so excited that my face was red, with sweat on it.

I sat on the commode lid and began to count my money. I had about five pounds, which was to have been for pocket money and house subscription. I felt rich, but I knew that it wouldn’t last long.

My thoughts got mixed up with the jogging of the train. They hammered along the rails and my head felt hot and seething and cut off from my body.

          

It was evening when the train arrived at Salisbury. The September light was melting and heavy, making everything look a little blurred.

I found my way to the cathedral and stood staring at it. When I had seen it with my mother she had worn some woollen flowers on her tweed coat and they had got mixed up in my mind with the black marble pillars and the arches.

I tried to go in, but the doors were locked, so I wandered along a narrow path, under the brown trees, and thought of Repton: the calling and the shouting and the feet moving over the scrubbed boards in the passages. Those boards were so worn that they had a soft, dull fur on them, like suede leather. The red blankets in the dormitories and the white chambers gleaming underneath. Every morning when I woke up and remembered where I was, I felt something draining out of me, leaving me weak.

A rush of gladness ran through me at the thought of what I had escaped. I sat down under a tree and looked at the spire of the cathedral. The sun had gone down and the air was getting cold. I thought of the people who wrapped themselves up in newspaper and slept on benches. I lay down on the bench to see what it was like, but some people passed, so I quickly sat up again. I knew that I could not stay there.

When my mother was with me we had stayed at the George. I got up to go in search of it. I wondered if I would dare go in even if I did find it.

I stood outside for a long time looking at the curtained windows. I wished that my mother was there again so that we could go in together.

At last I swung the door open and walked up to the little lighted office. There was a quiet woman there with soft, mousy hair. I asked her quickly for a room for one night.