“ME LUN AWAY.”

Winter passed drearily away—a wet one, as it happened, with never once the white gleam of snow, and scarcely a touch of the healthy sting of frost. “Cobbler” Horn had not ceased to sorrow for his dead wife; and, when the spring was well advanced, there befell him another, and scarcely less severe bereavement, though of a different kind.

There had been no improvement in the relations between Aunt Jemima and the child. Aunt Jemima still maintained the harsh system of discipline which she had adopted at first; and the result was that the child had been led to regard her father’s sister with as near an approach to hatred as was possible to her loving little heart. Marian’s heart was big, almost to bursting, with concealed sorrow. Like her father, young as she was, she found it easier to bear grief than to tell it out. She did not want her father to know how miserable she was. Her childish soul was filled with bitterness, and her young life was being spoiled. Such of her pleasures as had not been taken from her were divested of all their charm. Almost her sole remaining joy was to snatch, now and then, a bit of clandestine love with her father, when, on some rare occasion, Aunt Jemima happened to be out of the way.

Recognising the uselessness of resisting a hand so hard and strong as that of Aunt Jemima, Marian had lately meditated another way of escape from the wretchedness of her lot. She contemplated an expedient which occurs more readily than any other to the youthful victim of oppression, but which had probably never before presented itself to the mind of a child so young. The expedient is one, indeed, which seldom effects its purpose, and is usually productive of a plentiful crop of troubles. But Marian had no fear. She was full of one thought. She could not any longer endure Aunt Jemima; and she must make it impossible for Aunt Jemima to scold, or smack, or restrain her any more. She must escape, without delay, from the sound of Aunt Jemima’s harsh voice, and place herself beyond the reach of Aunt Jemima’s rough hand. True, there was her father. How could she leave him? This would have been impossible to her if she had realised what she was about to do. But it seemed so easy and pleasant to slip out into the bright spring morning, and trot away into the mysterious and delightful country, which lay outside the town. Nor did she dream of the hardships and danger which might be awaiting her out in the strange, unloving world, into which she had so lightly resolved to launch her little life. So it came to pass that, on a certain bright May morning, Marian took her opportunity, and went out into the world.

Marian’s opportunity was furnished by the fact that Aunt Jemima had gone out, leaving Marian at home, and, for once, had forgotten to lock the door. As soon as Aunt Jemima’s back was turned, the child huddled her little pink print sun-bonnet upon her small black head, and, with one furtive glance over her shoulder towards her father’s workshop, whence she could distinctly hear the quick “tap-tap” of his hammer, she opened the front-door, and slipped into the street. Her first action was to shoot a keen glance, from her sharp little eyes, to right and left. There was no one to be seen but one of the funny little twin men who kept a huckster’s shop across the way. This little man was a great friend of Marian’s, and he called to her now in joyous tones, as he stood in the doorway of his shop, to come over and see what he had in his pocket. Marian gave a decided shake of her head.

“No; Ma-an going away. Tum another time.”

Then, murmuring to herself, “Me lun away,” she set off down the street, with a defiant swagger of her small person, and her bonnet-strings streaming out upon the wind; and the little huckster watched her with an admiring gaze, little thinking into what wilds of sorrow those tiny twinkling feet had set off to run.