Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/244

232 unobserved. True, she had only a half-crown and two pennies left after paying her fare, but she supposed that would be enough to last her until she could go on board a vessel. Surely chance had favoured her in enabling her to reach the station in the nick of time to catch the train, and no doubt she would be equally fortunate when she reached Liverpool. Her fellow passengers were uninteresting, and she had no desire to talk to anyone and confide her affairs, so she amused herself with her own thoughts and plans for the future. At Preston she changed, and bought a bun at the refreshment rooms; her dinner had been almost untasted, and she was growing hungry now. It seemed funny to have absolutely no luggage, though in one respect it was a great convenience not to be obliged to haul about a heavy handbag, or to tip a porter out of her extremely small capital.

"I feel almost as if I'd been shipwrecked again—in a borrowed dress and hat, and nothing else to call my own!" she thought with a smile.

It was half-past six before the train arrived at the big Liverpool terminus—rather late in the day to begin all the numerous enquiries which Gipsy was determined to make; but, nothing daunted, she set out at once for Waterloo, to try to find the residence of her old friend Captain Smith. She was directed by a policeman to take an overhead electric car, and travelled several miles above what seemed a wilderness of streets before she reached the suburb in question. Not knowing where to make a beginning, she decided to go first to a post office, thinking that there she might be able to gain the information she wanted.