The door closed softly, and Marcia pressed both hands over her heart to keep it from thundering too loud. She shut her eyes, waiting for the high-heeled footsteps to cross to the back hall, but after a full moment in sudden silence she opened them. For a moment she did not realize what was wrong. Then she knew eyes were upon her. Before she met them, she knew what it would be. The two marble eyes fixed on her were filled with implacable hatred. Her stepmother was bending over the chair looking down at her.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Marcia choked.

“Spying. Sneaking.” The voice was deadly calm, and Marcia thought this then would be the end of her, death from fright. “Trying to find out things that are none of your business so you can tell everybody lies. Well, this is one time you won’t. Come out of there, and go in the kitchen.”

Unable to speak and unable to move, the grim fingers gripped her wrist and yanked her briskly into the kitchen, opened the screen door and pushed her outside, locking it again.

“Wait,” said her stepmother, and her steps could be heard flying upstairs. Marcia had to wait, for she did not know what to do or how she could get her legs to moving anyway. If Papa had come up the path then, she would not have dared tell him what was happening, any more than she’d dare tell anyone. In almost no time, the high-heeled slippers flew down the back stairs, and this time there was a crooked smile on her stepmother’s face. She handed out the door, a big square bag, indeed the very telescope, now mouse-chewed and shabby, that the Willards had moved with to London Junction, the “telescope” in which Dr. Byrd had brought Florrie ten years ago.

“There’s your things,” She said. “Never come back here again. I’ll tell my story of what happened, and it’s not going to be the same as yours, so the best thing for you to do is clear out. Don’t you dare open your mouth about anything you heard and don’t you dare go to your father with any tales. You’ll pay for it if you do. Get out!”

Marcia stood stupidly for a while, even after the door clicked. She didn’t know what to do, because Myrtle Chase was walking past and would see her being put out of the house. When Myrtle turned the corner, Marcia picked up the telescope and ran as fast as she could across the vacant lots between home and the railroad tracks. She took the freight tracks because they didn’t run through the center street but switched off a side alley till they came to the depot. She ran so fast that she fell down in the cinders once and bruised her hand. She could see the end of the street where Aunt Lois lived, and she desperately wished she dared stop to see Lena, but she might tell and then she’d be killed or might be taken back home. Coming to the station, there was a passenger train coming in and Marcia knew she would have to take it no matter which way it was going. If it was going toward Elmville she would go to Aunt Betts’s, though she knew their house was full of half a dozen grandchildren now and Aunt Betts was sick. If it was going toward Cleveland—! She asked the conductor and he said it was Cleveland, and Marcia stumbled onto the coach. She dragged her bag into the women’s room, so that anyone getting on from the Junction wouldn’t see her and try to stop her. She stood in there trying to fix herself up and wiping away tears of fright.