I travelling alone; and I told her that I
was an orphan, that my name was Florence Clare, and that I was on my way
to New York; and then she looked so kind and interested that I burst
right out crying. I couldn't help it. She didn't ask me any more then,
but when we got to New York, no one met her, and she was terribly
worried. She asked me where I was going, and I was afraid she would
think something was wrong if I told her I didn't know where; so I just
gave any street and number, but I said that if she wanted me to go and
help her, I could just as well as not, as no one was expecting me
anywhere. She seemed very glad, so I carried the children out, and after
a policeman had called a hack for her, we went to the St. Nicholas; she
was very sick after we got there, and after I put the children to sleep,
I sat up with her nearly all night. She was a widow, she said, and had
written to a friend in New York to meet her on that train, but that,
probably, he had not received the letter; and that she wanted to go
right on to Boston, next morning, if she was able. I asked her then if
she did not want me to go with her, to take care of the children, that I
was all alone in the world, and obliged to work some way and somewhere,
and after asking me a great many questions, she said she would think
about it. She seemed like a very good, kind lady, and I was afraid she
would think there was something strange about me, so I made my story
sound just as good as possible. I said I was coming to the city because
I thought I could find work better than in a small place, and that I had
no near relatives in the world, and would like to go with her, because
she looked kind, and I would just as soon take care of children as
anything else. She looked at my clothes, but they were my very plainest;
and then she asked me what baggage I had, and I showed her my satchel,
with nothing but some clothes in it, and then she said that I looked
truthful, and too young and pretty to be alone in the city, and that I
should go on with her in the morning. I don't know what I would have
done if it hadn't been for her, for when I was on the train, I had no
idea where I would go or what I would do. Before I left home, I tried to
feel right, to forget who I was, but I couldn't; my head kept aching,
and I thought every day that it ached harder, and that pretty soon I
would be crazy; and then I thought of going away where I could never be
found, and die somewhere,