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It all happened one early Friday morning in the chilly month of April.  Mary Smith ran away, dressed in her maid’s clothes.  The eighteen year old teenager felt like she had just escaped from a prison.  She was free at last.  Her exultation was beyond words.  Mary was in a fever of excitement – for the first time she could do whatever she liked, eat if she wanted….  Mary’s first happy day roaming in the roads of Port-Louis seemed as if she was reading a very interesting, adventurous book.

But this joy did not last long.  As Mary started to feel the doubled pangs of hunger, she ignored them at first but then in the afternoon she could bear no longer.  Mary sold her gold earrings but got them for only fifty rupees. She bought “dholl-puris” and ate those ravenously, at the same time comparing the food with the savory chicken curry that she used to get at home free.  She only sighed and kept the remaining money in her pockets.

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Night fell and rain started to fall heavily.  Mary, lonely and unsecure, was crying silently thinking of her cosy bed in her warm room.  Suddenly two masked boys emerged out of the darkness and threatened her – she had to give them the little money left.  Cursing, she finally cried herself to sleep.

Mary woke up the next morning feeling weak and dirty, hunger gnawing her.  The happiness she first felt was gone, Mary was now only a poor girl wondering here and there.  For one second, she was even tempted to beg so hungry she was.  Then, she started to look the world with a new eye.  She started to realise her foolishness, her immaturity.  Although she was eighteen, she failed to understand the true value of money.  Exhausted, Mary managed to walk to her parents’ door in tears. 

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Her parents accepted her without a hard word, cleaned her, fed her.  Mary excused herself before her parents.  Running away taught her the most important lesson in life in her case.  Henceforth, Mary turned over a new leaf, never taking money given to her as granted and respecting the food offered to her.

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