She jumped out of bed, and hurried on her clothes.  There was no wise woman to be seen; and she hastened into the hall.  There was the picture, with the marble palace, and the proclamation shining in letters of gold upon its gates of brass.  She stood before it, and gazed and gazed; and all the time it kept growing upon her in some strange way, until at last she was fully persuaded that it was no picture, but a real city, square, and marble palace, seen through a framed opening in the wall.  She ran up to the frame, stepped over it, felt the wind blow upon her cheek, heard the sound of a closing door behind her, and was free.  Free was she, with that creature inside her?

The same moment a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, wind and rain, came on.  The uproar was appalling.  Agnes threw herself upon the ground, hid her face in her hands, and there lay until it was over.  As soon as she felt the sun shining on her, she rose.  There was the city far away on the horizon.  Without once turning to take a farewell look of the place she was leaving, she set off, as fast as her feet would carry her, in the direction of the city.  So eager was she, that again and again she fell, but only to get up, and run on faster than before.

IX.

The shepherdess carried Rosamond home, gave her a warm bath in the tub in which she washed her linen, made her some bread-and-milk, and after she had eaten it, put her to bed in Agnes’s crib, where she slept all the rest of that day and all the following night.

When at last she opened her eyes, it was to see around her a far poorer cottage than the one she had left—­very bare and uncomfortable indeed, she might well have thought; but she had come through such troubles of late, in the way of hunger and weariness and cold and fear, that she was not altogether in her ordinary mood of fault-finding, and so was able to lie enjoying the thought that at length she was safe, and going to be fed and kept warm.  The idea of doing any thing in return for shelter and food and clothes, did not, however, even cross her mind.

But the shepherdess was one of that plentiful number who can be wiser concerning other women’s children than concerning their own.  Such will often give you very tolerable hints as to how you ought to manage your children, and will find fault neatly enough with the system you are trying to carry out; but all their wisdom goes off in talking, and there is none left for doing what they have themselves said.  There is one road talk never finds, and that is the way into the talker’s own hands and feet.  And such never seem to know themselves—­not even when they are reading about themselves in print.  Still, not being specially blinded in any direction but their own, they can sometimes even act with a little sense towards children who are not theirs.  They are affected with a sort of blindness like that which renders some people incapable of seeing, except sideways.