I had no need now to have father and mother tell me to hurry up and
finish my chatter, for I kept all that happened to myself. I had a new
"intimate friend," and did not so much as mention her. I wrote a poem
and showed it to my teacher, but not to my uninterested parents. And
when I climbed the stairs at night to my room, I swelled with loneliness
and anguish and resentment, and the hot tears came to my eyes as I heard
father and mother laughing and talking together and paying no attention
to my misery. I could hear Toot, who used to be making all sorts of
little presents for me, whistling as he brought in the wood and water,
and then "cleaned up" to go to see his Tulula, with never a thought of
me. And I said to myself that the best thing I could do was to grow up
and get away from a place where I was no longer wanted.

No one noticed my sufferings further than sometimes to say impatiently,
"What makes you act so strange, child?" And to that, of course,
I answered nothing, for what I had to say would not, I felt, be
understood.

One morning in June I left home with my resentment burning fiercely
within me. I had not cared for the things we had for breakfast, for I
was half-ill with fretting and with the closeness of the day, but my
lack of appetite had been passed by with the remark that any one
was likely not to have an appetite on such a close day. But I was so
languid, and so averse to taking up the usual round of things, that I
begged mother to let me stay at home. She shook her head decidedly.

"You've been out of school too many days already this term," she said.
"Run along now, or you'll be late!"

"Please--" I began, for my head really was whirling, although, quite as
much, perhaps, from my perversity as from any other cause. Mother turned
on me one of her "last-word" glances.

"Go to school without another word," she said, quietly.

I knew that quiet tone, and I went. And now I was sure that all was over
between my parents and myself. I began to wonder if I need really wait
till I was grown up before leaving home. So miserably absorbed was I
in thinking of this, and in pitying myself with a consuming pity,
that everything at school seemed to pass like the shadow of a dream. I
blundered in whatever I tried to do, was sharply scolded for not hearing
the teacher until she had spoken my name three times, and was holding on
to myself desperately in my effort to keep back a flood of tears, when I
became aware