Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/43

 "Like a bond servant!" finished Sally proudly. "Nor do I always feel like one, sir—though the knowledge oft comes upon me like a whip!" There was a little silence. "I be an orphan; no one knows who were my parents," she went on presently. "The only thing I ever heard was from an old woman, who kept me 'til I was 'most eleven. She said my parents went down wi' a ship off Boston Town way and that her son, a sailor on the ship, did save me and bring me to her, a baby. He then went away again, and she ne'er saw him again—mayhap he was drowned, himself, afterward. Grannie Haggerty ne'er knew, although she may ha' been lying, o' course, for he might ha' been in jail and she ashamed to tell me. The first I remember was a long, long journey from Boston Town to New York, wi' Grannie Haggerty and me waking hungry, and I crying at night in strange stables where we slept i' the hay. Grannie Haggerty was very poor. When she died they took me to a kind lady's house, a Mistress Van Houten; and there her friend. Parson Chapman, visiting from Orange, saw me and took me home wi' him. But his wife was dead, and so he bound me out to the Todds, and here I be!"

"But ha' ye nought to tell your identity?" asked the boy sympathetically.

"Nay, nothing o' value." Sally looked somberly off into space. Her sensitive lips quivered. "Only