“More so than even you realize, Lucy,” rejoined Burton sadly.
Alone through the darkness strode a man with a dull, hard, crushing pain in his brave, faithful heart.
“The child will be ruined,” said all the old ladies of the Dunlaps’ acquaintance when they learned that it had been determined by the child’s grandfather to keep the motherless and fatherless little creature at home with him, rather than send her to reside with some remote female members of her mother’s family.
“Those two old gentlemen will surely spoil her to that degree that she will be unendurable when she becomes a young woman,” asserted the women with feminine positiveness.
“They will make her Princess of the house of Dunlap, I suppose,” added the most acrimonious.
To a degree these predictions were verified by the result, but only to a degree. The twin brothers almost worshiped the beautiful little maiden, and did in very fact make her their Princess, and so, too, was she often called; but possibly through no merit in the management of the brothers, probably simply because Lucy was not spoilable was the desirable end arrived at that she grew to be a most amiable and agreeable woman.
The son of Mr. John Dunlap, the father of Lucy, survived but one year the death of his wife, which occurred when Lucy was born. Thus her grandfather and uncle became sole protectors and guardians of the child; that is until the lad, Jack Dunlap, came to live at the house of his godfather.
Young Jack was the only child of a second cousin of the twin brothers; his father had been lost at sea when Jack was yet a baby. His mother, Martha Dunlap, had gladly availed herself of the kind offer of the boy’s kinsman and godfather, when he proposed that the boy should come and live with him in Boston, where he could obtain better opportunities for securing an education than he could in the old town of Bedford.
Jack was twelve years of age when he became an inmate of the Dunlap mansion, and a robust, sturdy little curly haired chap he was; Princess Lucy’s conquest was instantaneous. Jack immediately enrolled himself as the chief henchman, servitor and guard of the pretty fairy-like maid of six years. No slave was ever more obedient and humble.