isn't heavy. I've got all my worldly goods in it, but it
isn't heavy. And if it isn't carried in just a certain way
the handle pulls out--so I'd better keep it because I know
the exact knack of it. It's an extremely old carpet-bag.
Oh, I'm very glad you've come, even if it would have been
nice to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We've got to drive a
long piece, haven't we? Mrs. Spencer said it was eight
miles. I'm glad because I love driving. Oh, it seems so
wonderful that I'm going to live with you and belong to you.
I've never belonged to anybody--not really. But the asylum
was the worst. I've only been in it four months, but that
was enough. I don't suppose you ever were an orphan in an
asylum, so you can't possibly understand what it is like.
It's worse than anything you could imagine. Mrs. Spencer
said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn't
mean to be wicked. It's so easy to be wicked without
knowing it, isn't it? They were good, you know--the asylum
people. But there is so little scope for the imagination in
an asylum--only just in the other orphans. It was pretty
interesting to imagine things about them--to imagine that
perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter
of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents
in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could
confess. I used to lie awake at nights and imagine things
like that, because I didn't have time in the day. I guess
that's why I'm so thin--I AM dreadful thin, ain't I? There
isn't a pick on my bones. I do love to imagine I'm nice and
plump, with dimples in my elbows."

With this Matthew's companion stopped talking, partly