The correct answer is lines: Oh! how she loved me I never had a chance to escape, and, Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark.
Indeed, Mr. Purkapile uses the signal word “escape”, which implies that he sees his marriage as a prison. The line “how she loved me!” is meant to be ironic since it implies that his wife was overbearing and dominant and used love as an excuse to assert her domination of him.
The line, I ran away is quite explicit. It describes his flight from an oppressive marriage. Finally the line “on a lark” is very symbolic. Birds have been used by feminists since first wave feminism to symbolize the oppressed female spirit. The fact the he is using such line, conveys the fact that in his marriage the gender roles of domination have been inversed.