I was
really intended from the first for that house, or whether the stork
became so frightened at the row in the street that he just dropped me
from sheer inability to carry me any farther--anyway, I came to a house
where trouble and poverty had preceded me, and, worse than both these put
together--treachery.

Still, I accepted the situation with indifference. That the cupboard
barely escaped absolute emptiness gave me no anxiety, as I had no teeth
anyway. As a gentleman with a medicine-case in his hand was leaving the
house he paused a moment for the slavey to finish washing away a pool of
blood from the bottom step--and then there came that startling clap of
thunder. Brand new as I was to this world and its ways, I entered my
protest at once with such force and evident wrath that the doctor
down-stairs exclaimed: "Our young lady has temper as well as a good pair
of lungs!" and went on his way laughing.

And so on that St. Patrick's Day of sunshine, snow, and rain, of riot and
bloodshed, in trouble and poverty--I was born.

CHAPTER SECOND

Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger--I Become Acquainted
with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions.

Of the Days of St. Patrick that followed, not one found me in the city of
my birth--indeed, six months completed my period of existence in the
Dominion, and I have known it no more.

Some may think it strange that I mention these early years at all, but
the reason for such mention will appear later on. Looking back at them,
they seem to divide themselves into groups of four years each. During the
first four, my time was principally spent in growing and learning to keep
out of people's way. I acquired some other knowledge, too, and little
child as I was, I knew fear long before I knew the thing that frightened
me. I knew that love for my mother which was to become the passion of my
life, and I also knew hunger. But the fear was harder to endure than the
hunger--it was so vague, yet so all-encompassing.

We had to flit so often--suddenly, noiselessly. Often I was gently roused
from my sleep at night and hastily dressed--sometimes simply wrapped up
without being dressed, and carried through the dark to some other place
of refuge, from--what? When I went out into the main business streets I
had a tormenting barege veil over my face that would not let me see half
the pretty things in the shop windows, and I was quick to notice that no
other litt