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'.'
The sailor morosely agreed, and I started my new life in an
atmosphere of protest against authority.
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