Well, the work did fly! “Everything goes,” said Hustler as he looked on approvingly. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and some way I grew a little more thoughtful; not nervous, but serious. Friday night I scarcely slept an hour. It seemed as if I was about to depart to another and better world. At breakfast Saturday morning my mother said: “It was a week ago to-day, Aspasia!” “Oh, yes,” I said, inwardly. “A week ago to-day! And now, never try to kill your old mother who loves you just the same whether you love her or not, by going off without telling us. Why, if Martha Heath hadn’t come and told us where you was, I would have died before morning. It was awful thoughtless of her too, not to have come here at once. She ought not to have put it off until ten o’clock.” It was only nine, but we like to make our troubles as great as possible, for greater credit then is ours for bearing them. I arose, kissed my good mother, and said: “Yes, I will always tell you myself hereafter when I am to be away--and so I tell you now. I am going away every Saturday to be gone over Sunday from now until October.” “‘How sharper than a rattlesnake’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,’ the Bible says, and after all I have done for you too! Oh, it is too much to think my only child should thus desert me in my old age, and go off nobody knows where, and disgrace us all! Disgrace us, disgrace us, dis----” It was too much, and she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears, rocking to and fro. Here Mrs. Grimes broke in with: “Mrs. Hobbs, will you never--! Why, ’Pasia has more sense than all of us. She ain’t no fool. She ain’t--Why, didn’t I come three weeks lackin’ two days afore she was born, and didn’t I wash and dress her myself?” The gentle Grimes always availed herself of the opportunity to tell of my birth, to cut off any quibbler who might state I was not the child of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs. “Mrs. Hobbs, you are a fool, and if ’Pasia ever does a bad thing it’ll be ’cause you drives her to it. I don’t know where she’s goin’, and dam if I care! I’ll trust her anywhere! Go on, ’Pasia, and stay a year. You’ll find us here when you comes back.” The Grimes cyclone had cleared the atmosphere, the rain had ceased, although the landscape was a trifle disheveled. I kissed the dear mother, grabbed my lunch-bag, and was gone. CHAPTER X. SECOND SUNDAY--TO THE WOODS AWAY.