“I cannot tell you any more about our parting. It was too sad. Somehow I survived it—I suppose because I was young and the world lay before me.
“A farmer’s buckboard approached in the rough lane, thumping over the frozen ruts, announcing its coming long in advance. I hid in the cabbage-patch. The farmer’s wife stopped the vehicle and gossiped with the driver, to give me a chance to climb into the back and hide.
To die in her arms would have been a happier lot than leaving her
“It was not easy to scramble up into the vehicle, for I was fat, and could not get a foothold. I tried using the spokes of the wheel as a ladder, but kept slipping and falling back. I knew one side of the wheel would go up and the other down when the wagon started, but could not figure out which side did which. However, I decided to take a chance. Taking a firm grip on one of the lower spokes I braced my feet on the one below it. It happened to be the right side of the wheel. So when the vehicle started the spoke I was holding to began to rise, carrying me up nearly to the top of the wagon. Bracing my legs, I gave a leap that landed me in the buckboard upon some empty potato sacks. Hurriedly selecting one I crawled into it.
“The farmer thought he had heard something fall into the wagon, and stopping his horses, he glanced back. I was hidden by this time but he saw a bulging under the pile of sacks and was about to poke into them when I said, ‘Please, Mr. Smythers, let me stay here until we get by those boys in the road. I am hiding from them.’
“When he heard my voice Mr. Smythers, of course, took me for a boy and he answered: ‘No, you cannot stay there. You will smother. Come out and I will protect you from the boys.’
“Receiving no reply he poked about among the sacks until he found the one I was in.