It must have been awful."
"It was, Dolly," said Eleanor, gravely. "I was there, and I made a point
of looking into things, so that if anyone ever blamed me for helping
Bessie and Zara to get away, I could explain that I hadn't just taken
Bessie's word for things. But running away was a pretty hard thing to
do. It's easy to talk about--but where was Bessie to go? She isn't like
you--or she wasn't.
"She didn't have a lot of friends, who would have thought it was just a
fine joke for her to have to run off that way. If you did it, you'd have
a good time, and when you got tired of it, you'd go back to your Aunt
Mabel, and she'd scold you a little, and that would be the end of it.
You must have thought of trying to get away, Bessie, didn't you?"
"Oh, I did, Miss Eleanor, often and often. When Jake was very bad, or
Maw Hoover was meaner than usual. But it's just as you say. I was afraid
that wherever I went it would be, worse than it was there. I didn't know
where to go or what to do."
"Well--that's so," said Dolly.
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