"You know I didn't mean that. When I get to Uncle Vivian I'll tell him to write to your Grandmother and tell her all about it and have you taken away. She'd listen to my uncle. But wait, you must get away from here before that. It would be dreadful if you were here alone for a bit between my going and the time you'd be able to get away, if we waited for Uncle Vivian to write—"
"He'd kill me if he dared. Can't you write to Uncle Vivian now, so that he could write to my Grandmother at once? I can't write. Uncle Simeon reads all my letters to her."
"A letter of mine mightn't reach Uncle Vivian. The last time he wrote to me was from Paris in France; he said he was going further south for Christmas, that's somewhere much further away, and said I need not write again as he would be back for the New Year. We're quite near Christmas now, so it's too late. I'll tell you my plan. Now, the day I go away, Mr. Greeber is sure to be at the railway station to see me off. The minute we've left the house you must be dressed and ready to run away and walk back to Tawborough; your Grandmother couldn't be angry if you told her all about him. Then Uncle Vivian will write as soon as I see him, and you won't have been alone with Mr. Greeber in the house for a minute."
"'Tisn't Grandmother, 'tis Aunt Jael. And suppose only Uncle Simeon goes with you to the station to see you off. What about Albert and Aunt Martha? Besides, he'll make me come too. He'd do it to please you, knowing you'd like it, though out of spite he'd want me not to, because he knows I'd like to. It all depends whether he wants to be nice to you more than to be nasty to me. Nice to you, I think, most of the two, because he can be nasty enough to me the second you're gone."
"You could say you felt sick."
"That's a lie. Besides, that might make him want to make me come all the more, if he thought it would pain me or make me feel worse to come. I don't tell lies, if he does. Unless of course, I really felt sick. I could take something and make myself sick, and then 'twould be true. But then Aunt Martha would say she'd stay with me while the rest of you went to the railway station. No, the best thing is to pretend very much I'd like to come, which of course I would, and then he won't let me. You might pretend to quarrel with me the last day; that would help. The real trouble is Aunt Jael; she'd get into a frightful rage and send me back; and when I came back, 'twould be a hundred times worse. He'd kill me."
"You said your Aunt Jael hated Mr. Greeber. If she knew he'd like it, are you sure she'd send you back; when she knew too that you'd run away for fear of your life? I'm sure she wouldn't do that."
"You don't know her. No, my plan is this: to write a letter somehow to Grandmother, who'd talk to Aunt Jael and sort of prepare her for my running away. I'll write it in bed tonight, it's the only place I can where he's not watching me; and we'll post it tomorrow afternoon, sometime on the walk when Albert isn't looking. I'll tell my Grandmother about the canings, and how he half starves me. Aunt Jael hates him so much that I think there's a chance. Then I needn't run away at all. Grandmother would come to fetch me herself."
The letter was duly written that night. I jumped out of bed and hid it in the bottom of my chest of drawers, in a far corner of the drawer between two white cotton Chemises. It would be safe there till the next afternoon. After dinner next day I came up to put on my hat and to get the letter. I put my hand in the corner underneath the Chemises. The letter was not there! I pulled the top chemise right out. There the letter was after all, but at the other end of the chemise. It had been moved. The garment was only eighteen or twenty inches long, but I remembered perfectly I had put the letter at the outside-end of the drawer and now it was right at the other end of the chemise, near the middle of the drawer. Yet there was my handwriting, there was the envelope: no one had tampered with it. It must be my over-suspicious mind. Aunt Martha had been tidying my clothes, or putting the clean washing away and so had moved the letter without seeing anything.... We posted it that afternoon. In a couple of days came my Grandmother's reply.