Thus she decided to try the world, to throw herself on chance, they could not be crueller than home. If all failed was there not the river? She had read in the papers of poor women leaping in it when all hope was over—"No, she would not go home."
Now that her mind was quite made up, so strange and delightful a sense of freedom, of adventure, filled that young soul that she could have shouted for joy. She felt no care for the morrow, not she—this new liberty quenched for the moment all other ideas and fears.
"And where to go to now?" she thought. "Where seek employment?"
She had the sixpence her father had given her for her fare, a small capital to start life upon. Should she buy a broom and sweep a crossing, or go out into the country and pluck flowers to sell in the town, as she knew some poor girls did?
She was well aware that she was far from being so ugly as her stepmother had made out. She knew that many a gentleman would stop to buy a flower from a pretty girl like herself, who would pass a plain woman unnoticed. Oh, yes, she knew that.
But she was so glad, so drunk with freedom, that she could not think steadily of these matters just yet. No, she must run wild for an hour or so, until this fever of delight had moderated. She must go to some great open lonely place, where she could laugh and dance to herself for awhile.
This poor little Mary who had never been a child before! all the pent-up childishness of the long sad years burst out in this her wild, mad, first day of freedom.
She thought she would go out of the crowded streets to be by herself in Hyde Park for an hour or so. She had been there once before on a winter's morning, and she had noticed what a vast lonely region it was. So she went up Piccadilly, passed into the Park, and found herself at the corner of Rotten Row.
Imagine her bewilderment at what she saw. It was no longer the dreary desert of the winter's morning, but a great garden filled with such a crowd in carriage, on horseback, and on foot, as only Hyde Park at one period of the day and in the height of the London season can show.