"But I am to go alone, sweet little mistress! That wicked rebel Lowry and his sanctified wife are sending your poor Mawkin away, because she loveth you, mine own poppet, and would mind you of home, and they mean that you shall never go again unto Walsover, but stay here with them forever and ever, and forget your father and your mother!"
"But wherefore?" asked poor Merrylips, who was quite dazed at this news.
Many times, both on the day of Mawkin's sorrowful departure, and in the days that followed, Merrylips repeated that question. At the time she got no answer that she could understand. It was not till she was much older that she learned the reasons that had lain behind what might almost be called her captivity.
Out of policy Will Lowry had kept Merrylips at Larkland. He had brothers and nephews fighting for the Parliament in the west country, where Merrylips' father was commanding a troop for the king. He believed that Sir Thomas was powerful enough to befriend these kinsmen, if they should be taken prisoners, and he believed that Sir Thomas would be more likely to do so, if Sir Thomas knew that his own little daughter was in the hands of the enemy. As a possible hostage, then, Will Lowry kept his masterful grasp on Merrylips.
For a different reason Mistress Lowry was not willing to let the little girl go. She had but one child, a son who was away at school, and, as Will Lowry had said, on the day when he seized the arms at Larkland, she wanted a little daughter. Now, like many other people, Mistress Lowry thought Merrylips a sweet child, and she wanted her for her own, and so she calmly took her.
Stranger still, Mistress Lowry believed that she did a praiseworthy thing in keeping the little girl from her parents and her friends. She meant to bring Merrylips up in the straitest sect of the Puritans. With such a bringing up she thought that Merrylips would be better and happier than if she were bred among her own kindred, for, according to Mistress Lowry, they were careless and evil people. No doubt Mistress Lowry, in her own way, dearly loved Merrylips, but it was a selfish and a cruel way.
So Will Lowry, from policy, and Mistress Lowry, from what she called love, were both determined to keep Merrylips at Larkland. And when they were thus determined, who could stop them? There were no courts of law, with power over men of both parties, to make Roundhead Will Lowry give back to Cavalier Sir Thomas his stolen child.
Neither could Sir Thomas risk the lives of his soldiers by marching a hundred miles or so into the enemy's country and taking back his little daughter by force of arms. When Sir Thomas had written a couple of hot-tempered letters to Will Lowry, he had done all that he could do. Perhaps at times he even forgot about Merrylips. He was so busy fighting for the king that he had no time to think about a little girl who, after all, was in no danger of ill-treatment.
But all these things Merrylips knew only when she was older. At the time, in the dreary autumn of 1642, she could not understand why the Lowrys kept her at Larkland, nor why her own kindred let her stay there. But at least she knew that she did not at all like it at Larkland, so, as soon as she felt strong and well again, she started off, one damp November day, to make her way alone to Walsover.
She had her crossbow to keep off padders and Roundheads, and a big piece of gingerbread to eat on the way. She took the silver ring, shaped like two hearts entwined, and hung it on a little cord about her neck, within her gown. She wished to have it with her for luck, because it was the last token that Lady Sybil had given her.