"Good-bye, old friend," she said, a little brokenly—"I'm going to run away."
"You'll find the others all down in the village, I expect," he reminded her.
She shook her head, and smiled through her tears. "I'm not going to find the others; I couldn't bear to meet them," she replied. "I'm going to run away into the world—all alone. Good-bye!"
"Stop!" he exclaimed, "you can't go like that." But she waved her hand to him, and ran up towards the bridge; turned there for a moment to wave her hand again, and to blow a kiss in his direction. And then ran on out of his sight, and down into the world.
CHAPTER XIX
THE LAMPS ARE LIT IN ARCADIA STREET
ARCADIA STREET, on a warm July evening some twelve months after that surprising day when Mr. Daniel Meggison had waved farewell to the Arcadia Arms for ever, looked much the same as it had ever done. Even the children who played wonderfully with no toys on the pavement seemed to be the same that had followed a certain Mr. Jordan Tant, on the occasion of his first visit to the street; and there were the same loungers (or others very like them) propping up that institution so necessary to Arcadia Street and the immediate neighbourhood—the Arcadia Arms.
Even in the house where Bessie had once toiled and struggled and dreamt there was a card propped up against the window-frame, announcing that within were rooms to let; quite as though that particular house had been marked from the beginning for that particular purpose, and could not change. Only in these days the house did not wear quite that air of neatness that it had worn when Bessie Meggison had presided there.
It was growing late this July evening, and the dusk was falling, and softening the outlines of the ugly houses, when a four-wheeled cab, after a preliminary objection on the part of the horse to entering the street at all, turned into Arcadia Street, and jerked and bumped and rattled its way along, until it came to a standstill at the door of that particular house. As the then landlady of the house afterwards stated, "it put her all of a quiver"—cabs of any sort being rare indeed in Arcadia Street. On the top of the cab were a couple of old and shabby portmanteaus, and a small square wooden box; inside was another box, and a smaller bag, and a young man. The young man got out, and, pushing his way through the small knot of children that had gathered to watch the proceedings, knocked quickly at the door, and then stood waiting. The cabman knelt upon his seat, with a hand on the foremost of the portmanteaus, and waited also.