Three Girls from School by L.T. Meade

It was a very tired Annie Brooke who arrived laden with her little bag late on a certain evening at Norton Paget. The darkness had quite set in, and when she entered the tiny station and took a third-class ticket to London she was not recognised.

There were two other girls of an inferior class to Annie going also to London by the train. She looked at them for a minute, but they did not know her; and when presently she found herself in the same carriage with, them, she felt a certain sense of repose in being in their company. But for the fact that these two girls were accompanying her to town, she would have given way to quite unreasoning terrors, for her nerves had been violently shaken by the events of the last fortnight. Those nerves had been weakened already by all the deceit through which she had lived now during long weeks. This final step, however, made her feel almost as though she had reached the breaking-point. She could have cried out in her fears. She hated the darkness; she hated the swift movement of the train. She wanted to reach London; and yet when she did get there she would not have the faintest idea where to go. With her money securely fastened about her little person, with her neat leather bag, she might have presented herself at any comfortable hotel and been sure of a good welcome, but somehow Annie felt afraid of grand hotels at that moment. She felt deep down, very deep in her heart that she was nothing more nor less than a runaway, a girl who had done something to be ashamed of, who was obliged to hide herself, and who was forced to leave her friends.