"ME LUN AWAY."
Winter passed drearily away--a wet one, as it happened, with never once
the white gleam of snow, and scarcely a touch of the healthy sting of
frost. "Cobbler" Horn had not ceased to sorrow for his dead wife; and,
when the spring was well advanced, there befell him another, and scarcely
less severe bereavement, though of a different kind.
There had been no improvement in the relations between Aunt Jemima and the
child. Aunt Jemima still maintained the harsh system of discipline which
she had adopted at first; and the result was that the child had been led
to regard her father's sister with as near an approach to hatred as was
possible to her loving little heart. Marian's heart was big, almost to
bursting, with concealed sorrow. Like her father, young as she was, she
found it easier to bear grief than to tell it out. She did not want her
father to know how miserable she was. Her childish soul was filled with
bitterness, and her young life was being spoiled. Such of her pleasures as
had not been taken from her were divested of all their charm. Almost her
sole remaining joy was to snatch, now and then, a bit of clandestine love
with her father, when, on some rare occasion, Aunt Jemima happened to be
out of the way.
Recognising the uselessness of resisting a hand so hard and strong as that
of Aunt Jemima, Marian had lately meditated another way of escape from the
wretchedness of her lot. She contemplated an expedient which occurs more
readily than any other to the youthful victim of oppression, but which had
probably never before presented itself to the mind of a child so young.
The expedient is one, indeed, which seldom effects its purpose, and is
usually productive of a plentiful crop of troubles. But Marian had no
fear. She was full of one thought. She could not any longer endure Aunt
Jemima; and she must make it impossible for Aunt Jemima to scold, or
smack, or restrain her any more. She must escape, without delay, from the
sound of Aunt Jemima's harsh voice, and place herself beyond the reach of
Aunt Jemima's rough hand. True, there was her father. How could she leave
him? This would have been impossible to her if she had realised what she
was about to do. But it seemed so easy and pleasant to slip out into the
bright spring morning, and trot away into the mysterious and delightful
country, which lay outside the town. Nor did she dream of the hardships
and danger which might be awaiting her out in the strange, unloving
world, into which she had so lightly resolved to launch her little life.
So it came to pass that, on a certain bright May morning, Marian took her
opportunity, and went out into the world.
Marian's opportunity was furnished by the fact that Aunt Jemima had gone
out, leaving Marian at home, and, for once, had forgotten to lock the
door. As soon as Aunt Jemima's back was turned, the child huddled her
little pink print sun-bonnet upon her small black head, and, with one
furtive glance over her shoulder towards her father's workshop, whence she
could distinctly hear the quick "tap-tap" of his hammer, she opened the
front-door, and slipped into the street. Her first action was to shoot a
keen glance, from her sharp little eyes, to right and left. There was no
one to be seen but one of the funny little twin men who kept a huckster's
shop across the way. This little man was a great friend of Marian's, and
he called to her now in joyous tones, as he stood in the doorway of his
shop, to come over and see what he had in his pocket. Marian gave a
decided shake of her head.
"No; Ma-an going away. Tum another time."
Then, murmuring to herself, "Me lun away," she set off down the street,
with a defiant swagger of her small person, and her bonnet-strings
streaming out upon the wind; and the little huckster watched her with
an admiring gaze, little thinking into what wilds of sorrow those tiny
twinkling feet had set off to run.