Strange it would have been had not Sally heard, for Mistress Cory Ann's voice was loud enough to have reached way across Lover's Lane. But Sally answered truthfully.
"Yes, I hear, Mistress Cory Ann, and I have not been on the Ingleside grounds at all."
No, she only had been roaming on the borders of the beautiful place, then hiding close to the stone wall.
A poor, hard-worked little girl it was that had raced back to Slipside Row. And no one to glance at her would have thought her pretty at all.
The people who lived in the row of houses were poor, but they all liked Sally. Yet all they knew about her was that her father had boarded with his little girl at Mistress Cory Ann Brace's house, when Mistress Brace lived in another town, and in a much finer house than any at Slipside Row. But he soon died, leaving his little girl, and some money, in Mistress Brace's care.
No one knew about the money, however, except Mistress Brace herself, but had it been used as it should have been, there would have been enough to have lasted some time, paying for the child's coming needs. But Mistress Brace hid it away, meaning to do with it exactly as she pleased, while she still kept Sally, because, being a smart and willing child, she could be of great use. Then Mistress Brace moved to a place called "The Flats," where she lived three years; now she had lived three more years at Slipside Row.
The mistress was not really cruel to Sally, neither was she kind. And very constantly at work she kept her, sweeping, cooking, sewing; in fact, doing anything that a growing child of eleven years could do. And if ever Sally grew tired, and was not brisk as usual, Mistress Brace would say that it was to the Town House she must go.
Now Sally had seen old Gran'ther Smithers and Aunt Melindy Duckers, who lived at the Town House, and she often had seen the old building itself, set far back in a grassy road that was not at all unpleasant, but so dreadful was the thought of ever having to go there herself, that no matter what Mistress Brace required of her, she tried her best to do it.
But one great help and comfort was coming to good little Sally. An ignorant woman was Mistress Brace, for indeed she could scarcely more than read and write, and she cared more for money and show than she did for better things, such as learning and filling the mind with useful knowledge.
People who know but little are likely to be superstitious; they are very quick to believe foolish and untrue sayings, or things that in the least alarm them, perhaps having in them something to dread.