But then the knowledge that I had done wrong, joined to a
desperate mother-hunger, I can call it by no other word, took
possession of me. I got to hate my aunt, who led a gay life. At last
I could bear it no longer. I ran away.
"I had just enough money in my pocket to take me to London; I had
not one penny more. But I felt easy enough; I thought, I will go to
our old home, and make it up with mother, and then it will be all
right. So I spent my last, my very last shilling in a cab fare, and I
gave the driver the old address.
"As I got near the house, I began to wish I had not come. I was such
an odd mixture; all made up of love and that terrible pride. However,
my pride was to get a shock I little expected.
"Strangers were in the old rooms; strangers who knew nothing
whatever about my mother. I found that I had so set my heart against
this marriage, that I had not even cared to inquire the name of the
man my mother had married; so I had no clew to give anyone, no one
could help me. I was only a child then, and I wandered away without
one farthing, absolutely alone in the great world of London.
"It drove me nearly wild to remember that my mother was really in
the very same London, and I could not find her, and when I had got as
far as a great bridge---I knew it was a bridge, for I saw the water
running under it---I could bear my feelings no longer, and I just
cried out like any little baby for my Mammie.
"It was then, Cecile, that Mrs.
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