"I promise you—not to a workhouse, if you will be a good child."
She scrambled to her feet at once, and, rather to Hubert's surprise, put one hot and dirty little hand into his own.
"I will be good," she said briefly; "and I will go wherever you like."
Nothing seemed easier to her just then.
CHAPTER VII.
"But, dear me, Mr. Lepel," said Mrs. Rumbold, "there's no place for a child like that but the workhouse."
Hubert stood before the Rector's wife in a pretty little room opening out upon the Rectory garden. Jenny had been left in the hall, seated on one of the high-backed wooden chairs, while her protector told his tale. Mrs. Rumbold—a short, stout, elderly woman with a good-natured smile irradiating her broad face and kind blue eyes—sat erect in the basket-chair wherein her portly frame more usually reclined, and positively gasped as she heard his story.
"To think of that child's behavior! I assure you, Mr. Lepel, that we tried to do our duty. We knew how painful it would be for the dear General and Miss Vane if any member of that wretched man's family were left in the village, and we thought it simplified matters so much that there was only one child—didn't we, Alfred?"
Alfred was the Rector, a tall thin man, very slow in expressing his ideas, and therefore generally resigning the task of doing so to his wife's more nimble tongue. On this occasion, unready as usual with a response, he crossed his legs one over the other, cleared his throat, and had just prepared to utter the words, "We did indeed, my dear," when Mrs. Rumbold was off again.