Giles? Do you think perhaps the
guard would help us to go back again to the Junction, when he sees it
was a mistake? As we've got money to pay to London, he'd see we hadn't
meant to cheat.'

'No,' I said, 'he wouldn't have time, and besides I don't think it'll be
the same one. And if we said anything, he'd most likely make us give our
names, or take us to some station-master or somebody, and then there'd
be no chance of our keeping out of a lot of bother.'

'You mean,' said she, in a shaky voice, 'we should have to go all the
way back, and I'd be sent to the witch again?'

'Something like it, I'm afraid,' I said. 'If I just explain that we got
into the wrong train and pay up, they'll have no business to meddle with
us.'

'But what are we to do, then?' she asked again.

'I don't know,' I replied. I'm afraid I was rather cross. I was so sick
of it all, you see, and so fearfully bothered.

Margaret at last began to cry. She tried to choke it down, but it was no
use.

I felt awfully sorry for her, but somehow the very feeling so bad made
me crosser, and I did not try to comfort her up.

Pete, on the contrary, tugged out his pocket-handkerchief, which was
quite a decently clean one, and began wiping her eyes. This made her try
again to stop crying. She pulled out her own handkerchief and said--

'Dear little Perkins, you are so kind.'

I glanced at them, not very amiably, I daresay. And I was on the point
of saying that, instead of crying and petting each other, they'd better
try to think what we should do, for I knew we must be getting near
London by this time, when I saw something white on the floor of the
carriage.

I stooped to pick it up. It had dropped out of Margaret's pocket when
she pulled out her handkerchief. It was an envelope, or what had been
one, and for a moment I thought it was the one I had given her with our
address on, to use when she wrote to us from Hill Horton, but _that_ one
couldn't have got so dirty and torn-looking in the time. And when I
looked at it more closely, I saw that it was jagged and nibbled in a
queer way, and _then_ I saw that it had the name 'Wylie' on it, and an
address in London. And when I looked still more closely, I saw that it
had never been through the post or had a stamp on, and that it had a
large blot in one corner. Evidently the person who had written on it had
not liked to use it because of the blot, and the name on it was _Miss_,
not _Mrs._ Wylie, '19 Enderby