s quite satisfied.

Once, indeed, the widow was puzzled. Molly had strayed away by herself,
and could not be found for nearly two hours. Provided with two figs and
several bits of biscuit, a half-crown and a shilling, she had started to
walk through the deep, heavy lanes between the great hills, with the
firm intention of taking ship to France. Mrs. Carteret treated the
escapade kindly and firmly; not making too much of it, but giving such
sufficient punishment as to prevent anything so silly happening again.
But she had no suspicion of what really had happened. Molly had, in
fact, started with the intention of finding her mother. It was two years
since she had come to live with Mrs. Carteret, and, if the child had
spoken her secret thought, she would have told you that throughout those
two years she had been meaning to run away and find her mother. In that
she would have fallen into an exaggeration not uncommon with some
grown-up people. It had been only at moments far apart, or occasionally
for quite a succession of nights in bed, that she had spent a brief
space before falling asleep in dreaming of going to seek her mother. But
whole months had passed without any such thought; and during these long
interludes the healthy country scenes about her, and the common causes
for smiles and tears in a child's life, filled her consciousness. Still,
the undercurrent of the deeper life was there, and very small incidents
were strong enough to bring it to the surface. Molly had short daily
lessons from the clergyman's daughter, a young lady who also took a
cheerful, airy view of the child, and said she would grow out of her
little faults in time. In one of these lessons Molly learnt with
surprising eagerness how to find France for herself on the map. That
France was much nearer to England than to India, and how it was usual to
cross the Channel were facts easily acquired. Molly was amazingly
backward in her lessons, or she must have learnt these things before.
When lessons were over and she went out into the garden, instead of
running as usual she walked so slowly that Mrs. Carteret, while talking
to the gardener, actually wondered what was in that child's mind. Molly
was living through again the parting with the ayah. She could feel the
intensely familiar touch of the soft, dark hand; she could see the
adoring love of the dark eyes with their passionate anger at the
separation. The woman had to be revenged on her enemies who wer