ch kept me
from showing what I suffered. I couldn't have borne to let them see
what a terrible change it was for me, all this drudgery and unkindness;
I felt it would have been like taking them into my confidence, opening
my heart to them, and I despised them too much for that. I even tried
to talk in a rough rude way, as if I had never been used to anything
better--"

"That was fine, that was heroic!" broke in Waymark admiringly.

"I only know it was miserable enough. And things got worse instead of
better. The master was a coarse drunken brute, and he and his wife used
to quarrel fearfully. I have seen them throw knives at each other, and
do worse things than that, too. The woman seemed somehow to have a
spite against me from the first, and the way her husband behaved to me
made her hate me still more. Child as I was, he did and said things
which made her jealous. Often when she had gone out of an evening, I
had to defend myself against him, and call the daughter to protect me.
And so it went on, till, what with fear of him, and fear of her, and
misery and weariness, I resolved to go away, become of me what might.
One night, instead of undressing for bed as usual, I told Jane--that
was the daughter--that I couldn't bear it any longer, and was going
away, as soon as I thought the house was quiet. She looked at me in
astonishment, and asked me if I had anywhere to go to. Will you believe
that I said yes, I had? I suppose I spoke in a way which didn't
encourage her to ask questions; she only lay down on the bed and cried
as usual. "Jane," I said, in a little, "if I were you, I'd run away as
well." "I will," she cried out, starting up, "I will this very night!
We'll go out together." It was my turn to ask her if _she_ had anywhere
to go to. She said she knew a girl who lived in a good home at
Tottenham, and who'd do something for her, she thought. At any rate
she'd rather go to the workhouse than stay where she was. So, about one
o'clock, we both crept out by a back way, and ran into Edgware Road.
There we said good-bye, and she went one way, and I another.

"All that night I walked about, for fear of being noticed loitering by
a policeman. When it was morning, I had come round to Hyde Park, and,
though it was terribly cold--just in March--I went to sleep on a seat.
I woke about ten o'clock, and walked off into the town, seeking a poor
part, where I thought it more likely I might find something to do. Of
course I asked