the neighbors would hear.

"Pretty soon he opened the door that led upstairs. 'Mary,' he shouted,
'you --- ---- come down and be ---- quick about it, I tell ye.' And
when I did, he said, 'I'll see whether we'll own any one what will
disgrace their poor, respectable, honest grandparents, _what has
brought ye up in the way ye should go_, in their old age! Out ye go,
and be ---- quick about it.' I can see him now, and Grandmother, who
was sitting at the kitchen table, sobbing with her head buried in her
apron. I crawled on my hands and knees toward him; I begged him not to
turn me out; I clung to him so that he could hardly walk, while he, in
his rage, was backing along the hall out toward the front door, and
then he managed to open it, me still clinging to him, and threw me,
with a curse, out into the dark, cold, wet night.

"I lay there on the doorstep until I found I was getting a soaking, and
then I went to a neighbor about a block away, who always had been very
kind to me, and had a girl of her own a little younger than me. Did I
tell her? Of course I did; I had to. So she took pity on me and let me
sleep there that night on a shake-down in the parlor, although Mattie
(her daughter) had a large bed to herself, and I told her not to go to
so much trouble, that I could sleep with her as I'd done before, many's
the time. But she said girls would get to talking, and she didn't want
her innocent Mattie to know a girl could ever bring such disgrace on
honest, respectable parents. But she didn't know how Mattie and I used
to talk for hours after we'd get in bed at night, about our 'fellers'
and such like, but now, who was I that I should tell her mother this?

"In the morning after breakfast (she kept Mattie out of sight
somewhere) she took me into the parlor, shut the door, and said: