But when I got up to my room with the echo of Grandmother's rasping voice in my ears, the thought of being shut up in the house for a week and treated like a lunatic was too much for me.

What had I done that every other healthy girl doesn't do every day without a question?
How COULD I go on living there, watched and suspected?
How could I put up any longer with the tyranny of an old lady who made me feel artificial and foolish and humiliated--a kind of doll stuffed with saw dust?
"Marty, I couldn't do it.

I simply couldn't.

Something went snap, and I just flung a few things into a suit-case, dropped it out the window, climbed down the creeper and made a dash for freedom.

Nothing on earth will ever take me back to that house again, nothing, nothing!" All this had been said with a mixture of humor and emotion that carried the boy before it.