“I’d rather hear Lady sing ‘Come Sound His Praise Abroad,’ or Ducky Darling turn the little broken music box, than the whole of this! Oh! take me back to them!”
Again she was promised to have her will as soon as she should be able.
But Owlet was beginning to disbelieve in promises, and to lay out plans for herself—idiotic little plans, indeed.
The child was like some poor, little, forsaken, puzzled pet dog, pining for its absent mistress, not knowing how it had been separated from her, longing to find her, but ignorant where to look for her in all the wilderness of the world, in all the despairful immensity of space.
And like this poor, silly, helpless little quadruped, Owlet felt an irresistible instinct to go away and look for her beloved all over the great earth until she should find her.
With a cunning beyond her years—a cunning, however, which is often found in connection with imbecility of mind, and even with idiocy—she concealed her purpose and watched for her opportunity.
Owlet was never left alone except when her nurse would go down to meals—fifteen minutes for breakfast, twenty for dinner—until sunset, when Mrs. Gilbert would put the child to bed, arrange her comfortably for the night, leave her safe in the little room, while generally Hanson would be reading or writing in the larger room, and go downstairs to join the other ladies’ maids and children’s nurses at their tea, and where all those whose duties, like those of Mrs. Gilbert, were over for the day, would remain gossiping together for an indefinite time.
This was the opportunity which the poor, forlorn, homesick child resolved to seize, on the first occasion on which Hanson also should be absent from the outer room.
The occasion came at length.
One afternoon in the early days of May, just as the sun was setting clear behind the hills of New Jersey, Mrs. Gilbert undressed Owlet, put her to bed, and then went down to her tea and her two hours’ gossip. Soon after Hanson came in, dressed for a party, and kissed Owlet good night. She heard him leave the room, and then she got out of bed and dressed herself in her very best clothes, and put on her prettiest coral necklace and armlets, and her finest hat, made up a little bundle of clothes and pinned them in a paper, and then left the room and went down—not by the elevator, but by the stairs—and passed from the house through the “ladies’ entrance,” without attracting any attention from anyone but the porter, who opened the door for her, without any suspicion that there was anything irregular in her going out in that self-possessed, matter-of-fact manner.