all about them soon, she thought, and their ugly faces. She shivered
slightly as she recalled the face of "Le Boss" as it was last bent upon
her, frowning and dark, and as ugly as a hundred devils, she was quite
sure. Ah, he would take away her violin--Le Boss! he would give it to
his own girl, whom she, Marie, had taught till she could play a very
little, enough to keep the birds from flying away when they saw her, as
they otherwise might; she was to have the violin, the Lady, one's own
heart and life, and Marie was to have a fiddle that he had picked up
anywhere, found on an ash-heap, most likely! Ah, and now he had lost
the Lady and Marie too, and who would play for him this evening, and
draw the children out of the houses? _he_! let some one tell Marie
that! It had not been hard, the running away, for no one would ever
have thought of Marie's daring to do such a thing. She belonged to Le
Boss, as much as the tent or the ponies, or his own ugly girl: so they
all thought in the _troupe_, and so Marie herself had thought till that
day; that is, she had not thought at all. While she could play all the
time, and had often quite enough to eat, and always something, a piece
of bread in the hand if no more,--and La Patronne, Le Boss's wife,
never too unkind, and sometimes even giving her a bit of ribbon for the
Lady's neck when there was to be a special performance,--why, who would
have thought of running away? she had been with them so long, those
others, and that time in France was so long ago,--hundreds of years ago!

So no one had thought of noticing when she dropped behind to tune her
violin and practise by herself; it was a thing she did every day, they
all knew, for she could not practise when the children pulled her gown
all the time, and wanted to dance. She had chosen the place well,
having been on the lookout for it all day, ever since Le Boss told her
what he meant to do,--that infamy which the good God would never have
allowed, if He had not been perhaps tired with the many infamies of Le