A Trip (Chapter 3 of Anne)

About a week later Anne and Joy were packing their bags to go to
Ontario. This time Anne was not only packing clothes that belonged to
her mother and were old and scruffy but she was packing the dresses
that Joy had bought or made for her. She even had a new coat, gloves,
hat and a new pair of shoes. All these were made to go together like a
suit.
"Are you excited?" Joy asked already knowing the probable answer.
"You can be sure I am! I can't wait. I know it's going to be a long
journey but I have never been on a steam train before so I'm sure I
will enjoy myself."
She was right in saying this for when they arrived at the train
station she was about to burst with excitement. Joy could see this and
so gave her a boiled sweet to suck on and calm down. For some reason
this seemed to do no good and so Gil and Joy were stuck there on the
platform trying to stop her talking until they were on the train.
When they actually got on the train she calmed down a bit. As they
watched the hills rolling by Anne fell asleep and woke up to find
herself at the port where she had arrived from the orphanage about two
weeks ago. She began to panic.
"What's wrong with you?" Gil asked.
"What if the head of the orphanage has come to look for me?" Anne said
with an extremely worried look on her face.
"She wouldn't have come all this way just to look for a child." Joy
muttered behind a rather large yawn.
"Well, she might have. I know of another girl who escaped out of the
orphanage and she went looking all the way in Saskatchewan for her and
she found her!" Anne exclaimed now looking very worried.
"Sam said that when he found you, he went into town and a woman was
asking for you and that he asked to adopt you right away. He signed the
papers and so she shouldn't still be out to look for you." Gil
reassured Anne.
Anne believed him and stopped worrying about things. She got on the
ferry which was the same one that she had boarded to get into Prince
Edward Island. Then something came to her mind like a flash.
"What if one of the staff on the boat recognized her and knew that she
had gone as a stowaway. Then they would be able to catch me and force
me to give them money when I don't have any."
"You have some weird ideas Anne." Joy chuckled as they got into their
passenger seats.
Time went very quickly and before either of them knew it, they were
getting off the ferry and back on to the train. As the train started
Joy fell asleep and so this gave Anne and Gil a good chance to get
properly acquainted with each other and Gil would be able to tell her
more about his brother Matthew.
"So, how did you come to P. E. I.?" Gil asked.
"I had a successful attempt at escaping from the orphanage that I was
in. Then I made my way to the port and just thought that Prince Edward
Island would be a good hiding place. After a while I became hungry. I
decided to look for a place where I could stay and Sam came along and
found me." Anne said.
"I was born here. My father died when I was seven years old. I have
lived with nobody else but mother and Matthew. As soon as Joy came
things began to brighten up for me. I at last had a friend who would be
able to play and talk with me without me having to walk a long way to
see her. When Matthew was old enough to go to school he started to walk
with me and so Joy began to go with Marigold instead because she like
being in a two and not a three. Of course she is not one of those
horrible girls who forgets about all her friends so we still played
with each other as we always did. Soon, afterwards Matthew found other
friends to go with and so I was all alone because Joy had got used to
being with Marigold the whole walk to school and wasn't in the mood to
change back to me. This went on for years until Marigold announced that
she was getting married. As soon as she told Joy who had proposed to
her Joy decided that she wasn't the good, kind friend she used to be.
She hated the way Marigold showed off her expensive engagement ring.
Joy came back to me and I was happy, in fact, I was more happy to be
with her than I ever was before because I had earned from her more
friendship than ever before through years of trying and trying.
It came to Marigold's wedding and I had been asked to lead in the
bridesmaids. Joy was one of them and was overjoyed when she heard that
I had been chosen. She said to me the night before the wedding that she
did not like the dress that Marigold had chosen, it was too bright and
she was sure that Marigold had chosen it to make her feel unhappy that
she wasn't the one getting married. I suppose if you looked at the
dress now you would laugh, it was pink with purple flowers on the
sleeves and the way she had to wear her hair up was ridiculous. When
Marigold moved away Joy didn't have any girls interesting enough to
talk to and so she always came to me when she wanted a friendly chat or
a laugh. You see, Joy and I are very good at making each other laugh
and just before Joy got on the train she said that she hoped that you
and Matthew would be able to do the same."
At this moment there was a big bang on the other end of the train which
woke Joy up and then the train began to slow down. Gil went out of the
compartment to see what had happened. He came back panic - stricken
saying that we would have to evacuate the train very quickly as it had
been set on fire at the front (Joy, Anne and Gil were in the back
compartment).
"Quick, gather your things Anne, quick!" Joy shouted who was beginning
to get very scared. "We don't want to die on the way to Marigold's, she
would make up her mind that it was her fault for us dying because she
was the one who invited us to come in the first place."
"Keep your mouth shut Joy and hurry up. We'll be here for ages if you
start talking about Marigold. The driver said to get out of the nearest
exits possible and if you can't get out of a door get out through a
window even if that means breaking it. He thinks that the train is
going to blow up because he can smell petrol." Gil shouted over the
screaming of a woman in the next compartment.
"Well in that case we had better hurry up then and get as far away from
the train as possible. I don't want to be blown to pieces by someone
who is such a coward as to not own up to his dreadful deed." Joy
exclaimed.
"Oughtn't we get out of here instead of hanging around talking about
being cowards and what the driver thinks is going to happen." Anne
screamed to be heard over the noise of all the people trying to get off
the train.
So all three of them went out of their cosy compartment and began to
try and find a place to escape. In the end they had to climb out of the
window at the back of the train. As soon as Gil got out he, Joy and
Anne began to run with a few other people to a nearby small paddock for
safety. If they had not run for another ten minutes they would all have
died leaving only certain parts of their body as evidence for how they
died. About ten people were seriously injured that day and two, who had
not got off the train in time, died. The news was spread around the
towns and it was a week later that Anne, Joy and Gil were writing home
to tell that they were safe and of what had happened from Marigold's
house.