“Oh, father!” said little Rags. “She wants to go home already!”
“Go home?” cried the Rag-Bone Man. “Are you talking about going home already? Oh, dear, don’t make me cry again! If you talk like that, I’ll cry, I know I will! You can’t leave us! It wouldn’t do! No, no! Sit down and eat your supper. Oh, dear, she wants to go home!”
They sat down at the table, but Merrimeg couldn’t eat; and after supper Rags and Merrimeg went to bed together in a little bed in the back room. The stars shone in through the window.
“To-morrow,” said Rags, pulling the covers up over Merrimeg, “we’ll have a grand play in the woods all day. Oh, won’t I be happy, though! I know where there’s a lot of wild strawberries, and a brook with crawly things on the bottom, and—oh, I’m so glad you’ve come! And father won’t ever let you leave me as long as you live! Oh, isn’t it jolly! I’ll never be lonely any more!”
She sighed with happiness, and nestled her head down on the pillow, and went to sleep.
But Merrimeg didn’t go to sleep. She thought about her mother, and what would happen if she never went home any more, and how she would miss her mother, and what the other children in the village would say after she’d been away for years and years, and—she sat up in bed. The little house was very still. She made up her mind that if she was ever going to get home, she had better try to steal away now. She got up quietly and dressed herself, and opened the door of the front room on a crack and peeked in.
A candle was burning on the table in there, and the Rag-Bone Man was over at the other side of the room, opening the drawers of a bureau one after another, and rummaging about inside. He was sniffling dreadfully.
“I can’t find ’em,” he was saying to himself. “Where are the plaguey handkerchiefs, anyway? To think that after I’ve tried so hard, and brought one of ’em here at last, she wants to go right away home, before she’s been here ten minutes! They’re all alike, that’s what it is. They don’t like me, and they run away from me, and when one of ’em comes here at last she wants to go right off home again. There ain’t one of ’em can abide the sight of me, and it’s a cruel shame, that’s what it is. It’s cruel. Oh, dear, I’m going to cry again—I just know I am—it’s coming on—I can feel it—where are those handkerchiefs, anyway?”
