I dropped the milk-cans inside the hoarding and sent the cap and overall after

them. I had only just put on my cloth cap when a postman came round the corner.

I gave him good morning and he answered me unsuspiciously. At the moment the

clock of a neighbouring church struck the hour of seven.

 

There was not a second to spare. As soon as I got to Euston Road I took to my

heels and ran. The clock at Euston Station showed five minutes past the hour. At

St Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let alone that I had not settled upon

my destination. A porter told me the platform, and as I entered it I saw the

train already in motion. Two station officials blocked the way, but I dodged

them and clambered into the last carriage.

 

Three minutes later, as we were roaring through the northern tunnels, an irate

guard interviewed me. He wrote out for me a ticket to Newton-Stewart, a name

which had suddenly come back to my memory, and he conducted me from the

first-class compartment where I had ensconced myself to a third-class smoker,

occupied by a sailor and a stout woman with a child. He went off grumbling, and

as I mopped my brow I observed to my companions in my broadest Scots that it was

a sore job catching trains. I had already entered upon my part.

 

“The impidence o’ that gyaird!” said the lady bitterly. “He needit a Scotch

tongue to pit him in his place. He was complainin’ o’ this wean no haein’ a

ticket and her no fower till August twalmonth, and he was objectin’ to this

gentleman spittin’.”