I did it the night that Jem
gave in, and would do nothing but cry noiselessly into his sleeve and
wish he was dead. So I settled it and told Lorraine. I wanted him to
come too, but he would not. He pretended that he did not care, and he
said he had nowhere to go to. But he got into Snuffy's very own room at
daybreak whilst we stood outside and heard him snoring; and very loud he
must have snored too, for I could hear my heart thumping so I should not
have thought I could have heard anything else. And Lorraine took the
back-door key off the drawers, and let us out, and took it back again.
He feared nothing. There was a walnut-tree by the gate, and Jem said,
"Suppose we do our faces like gipsies, so that nobody may know us." (For
Jem was terribly frightened of being taken back.) So we found some old
bits of peel and rubbed our cheeks, but we dared not linger long over
it, and I said, "We'd better get further on, and we can hide if we hear
steps or wheels." So we took each other's hands, and for nearly a mile
we ran as hard as we could go, looking back now and then over our
shoulders, like the picture of Christian and Hopeful running away from
the Castle of Giant Despair.
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