CHAPTER 16Miss Nellie Collins settled herself in the corner of an empty third-class carriage. She hoped someone else would get in—someone nice. She never really cared about travelling in an empty carriage, because of course there was always the chance of someone getting in who was not really nice. When she was a little girl she had heard a story about a lunatic who got into a train with a friend of her Aunt Chrissie and made her eat carrots and turnips all the way from Swindon to Bristol. Her Aunt Chrissie’s friend had a very severe nervous breakdown after this experience, and though it had happened at least fifty years ago, and this local train from Blackheath to Waterloo stopped much too frequently to give a lunatic any real scope, Miss Nellie preferred to be on the safe side. She sat up
