The Old Flute-Player | Page 4

any lucid exposition from him of the strange occurrences, that, lately, she never probed him for an explanation. She well knew, in advance, that she would get none, and was unwilling to compel him into laboring evasions. But such matters sorely puzzled her.
She did not learn, therefore, that the tall and handsome man who had so curiously stared at them was the Exalted Personage; she did not learn why it had been that from him Kreutzer had fled swiftly with her, obviously worrying intensely lest they might be followed. She did not know why, later, she was in closer espionage than ever. Two or three days afterwards, when Kreutzer came in with his pockets full of steamship time-tables and emigration-agents' folders, she did not dream that it was that the Most Exalted Personage had cast his eyes upon them, rather than the fact that wonderful advantages were promised to the emigrant by all this steamship literature, which had made him make a wholly unexpected plan to go from London and to cross the mighty sea. He swore her to close secrecy.
It was with the utmost difficulty that she concealed their destination from the landlady and from the slavey who assisted her in packing the small trunks which held their all. She was always glad of anything which made it absolutely necessary for them to be with her, for her father, long ago, had told her not to ask them into their small rooms when their presence there was not imperatively needed. She was and had been, ever since she could remember clearly, very lonely, full of longing for companionship--so very full of longing that, had he not commanded it, she would not have been, as he was, particular about the social status of the friends she made.
Even poor M'riar's love was very sweet and dear to her, and now, as she was packing for departure the meagre garments of her wardrobe, her scanty little fineries, the few small keepsakes she had hoarded of the pitifully scarce bright days of her life (almost every one of these a gift from her old father, token of a birth-or feast-day) it was with a sudden burst of tears, a rushing, overwhelming feeling of anticipatory loneliness, that she looked at the grimy little child who was assisting her.
M'riar fell back on her haunches with a gasp. "Garn!" she cried. "Garn, Miss! Don't yer dare to beller!"
A stranger might have thought she was impertinent, for "garn" on cockney lips means "go on, now," in the slang of the United States, and "beller" is not elegant, but Anna knew that she did not intend an impudence.
"I feel very sad at leaving you, M'ri-arrr." There was pathos, now, in the way Miss Anna rolled her r's.
"Sad! Huh! Hi thinks Hi'll die of it!" was the reply, accompanied by more choked sobs and many snuffles. "An' yer won't heven tell me w'ere yer hoff to!"
"I don't know, exactly, where we're off to M'ri-arrr. Somewhere very far--oh, very far!"
M'riar, in spite of a firm resolution not to yield to tears, cast herself upon the floor in anguish, and, as she kicked and howled, grasped one of Anna's hands and kissed it, mumbling it, as an anguished mother might a babe's--the hand of an exceedingly loved babe whom she expected, soon, to lose by having given it to someone in adoption.
At that time M'riar looked upon the separation as inevitable. The wild scheme which, afterwards, grew in her alert and worried brain, had not yet had its birth and she could not take the thought of her Miss Anna's going with composure.
"Hi didn't want ter 'oller," she said, at length, when she had regained her self-control, "but that there yell hinside o' me was bigger'n Hi 'ad room fer, Miss."
"It is very sweet of you to weep," said Anna gravely, "although it is not sweet to hear you weep; but I think it means you love me, M'ri-arrr, doesn't it?"
"Hi fair wusships yer," said M'riar. "Fair wusships yer."
And there was a strange thing about Miss Anna. It did not in the least surprise her to be told with an undoubted earnestness, indeed to know, that she was literally worshiped as a goddess might be. There was something in her blood which made this seem quite right and proper. She looked at the poor slavey with the kind eyes of a princess gazing at a weeping subject, whose suffering has come through loyalty, and kindly smiled.
"It is very nice of you, M'riarr. I am fond of you, M'riarr."
"I knows yer is; I knows yer is," said M'riar. "Tyke me with yer, won't yer, Miss?"
"Oh, I couldn't take you with me," Anna answered, as she laid a kind, if queenly hand upon the poor thing's cheek. "But you must let me know