Left alone, Elizabeth looked about for the food which was provided for
her, and found there were some pieces of bread about as much as a
'quartern loaf'--and three-quarters of a gallon of water or a little
more, in a pitcher. She had besides a penny mince-pie that she had
bought while she was at her uncle's the day before, and intended as a
present for her little brother; for, as she said to her mother, the boy
had 'huffed her,' and she had not given him a penny like his sisters, so
the mince-pie was to make up.
At this point Chitty seems to have stopped her, and asked her to
describe the room in which she was imprisoned and to tell him what it
contained. There was but little furniture of any sort in it, she
answered. An old stool or two, an old chair and an old picture over the
chimney. The room itself had two windows, facing north and east, one of
which was entirely boarded up; but the other, though there were some
boards on it, was mostly glass. It was through the window at the end of
the room that she escaped about half-past three on the afternoon of
Monday January 29, dropping on to the roof of a shed built against the
house, and so to the ground.
She knew, it appears, that the road which ran past the house was the one
leading from London into Hertfordshire, because she recognised the
coachman who had carried parcels for her mistress many a time. Thus,
when she escaped, tearing her ear as she did so on a nail outside the
window, she had no difficulty in starting in the right direction for
London, though after a short distance she became confused, and had to
ask the way of several people. She ended by saying that she arrived at
home about ten o'clock very weak and faint, and that her mother gave
her some wine, which however she was unable to swallow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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