I kept my eyes fixed on the Seminary as long as it remained in view, especially on the little corner room.  It seemed to me that I must be a very wicked girl indeed, because I felt no real sorrow at quitting the place that had been my home for so many years.  I could not feel anything but secretly glad, but furtively happy with a happiness which I felt ashamed of acknowledging even to myself.  Miss Chinfeather’s white and solemn face, as seen in her coffin, haunted my memory, but even of her I thought only with a sort of chastened regret.  She had never touched my heart.  There had been about her a bleakness of nature that effectually chilled any tender buds of liking or affection that might in the ordinary course of events have grown up and blossomed round her life.  Therefore, in my child’s heart there was no lasting sorrow for her death, no gracious memories of her that would stay with me, and smell sweet, long after she herself should be dust.

My eight miles’ ride by coach was soon over.  It ended at the railway station of the county town.  The guard of the coach had, I suppose, received his secret instructions.  Almost before I knew what had happened, I found myself in a first-class carriage, with a ticket for Eastbury in my hand, and committed to the care of another guard, he of the railway this time—­a fiery-faced man, with immense red whiskers, who came and surveyed me as though I were some contraband article, but finished by nodding his head and saying with a smile, “I dessay we shall be good friends, miss, before we get to the end of our journey.”

It was my first journey by rail, and the novelty of it filled me with wonder and delight.  The train by which I travelled was a fast one, and after my first feeling of fright at the rapidity of the motion had merged into one of intense pleasure and exhilaration of mind, I could afford to look back on my recent coach experience with a sort of pitying superiority, as on a something that was altogether rococo and out of date.  Already the rash of new ideas into my mind was so powerful that the old landmarks of my life seemed in danger of being swept clean away.  Already it seemed days instead of only a brief hour or two since I had bidden Mrs. Whitehead farewell, and had taken my last look at Park Hill Seminary.

The red-faced guard was as good as his word; he and I became famous friends before I reached the end of my journey.  At every station at which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on, and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Eastbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on the little platform.