Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/71

 one moment she stood aghast! then her terrified fancy feigned a step upon the stairs; she darted through the open door and rushed down the garden. Where she should go to escape the anger of the mistress, she scarcely knew; but she came to the garden wicket, it led into a lane; she opened it, shut it behind her, and with it shut the door upon home and hope; shut the door upon all that had kept her from beggary and wretchedness, from a vagrant life, from contact with everything that is evil and vicious, and from ignorance of everything that is good.

She ran away, and no one knew what became of her. There was a man who said, some time afterwards, that he had met her that night about sundown, wandering over the moor, but that he had asked her no questions, for he thought some of her friends must be near at hand. In the course of time many rumors got about respecting her, but nothing was ever known. Little Rie 'was not;' she had vanished from her place like a dream.

O, weary nights, when Sally was alone by the fire, and thought of her pretty companion, and cried, and then started up and opened the door, to find for the fiftieth time that it was only the tapping rosebud that she had heard against the casement! O, weary nights, when the mistress lamented over her, and forgave all her childish faults, and wondered to find how much she had loved her; and could not rest in the wind for thinking of her shelterless head, and could not rest in the rain when thinking of the night when first she took her in, and could not rest in her bed for dreaming of a Rh