She was arranging her hair slowly when Biddy said: “Are you very sure, me darlint, that you want your old Biddy with you in youse elegant home?”
Nellie dropped the hair which had twined about her fingers, and looked at her foster mother.
“Well, if you don’t go with me, then I won’t go either,” and Nellie sat down and commenced to cry.
“There, there, honey,” soothed the woman. “Don’t you take on so; your Biddy would follow you to the ends of the earth. But I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
“That I could never be,” said Nellie, “and when Tom gets out of prison, then we’ll all go abroad, for I shall have enough money for all of us.”
“Oh, I’m delighted to be with me darlint,” replied Biddy. “I only hope you can find a lawyer who will help you get poor Tom out.”
“I meant what I said,” averred Nellie later, while thinking deeply, “that I would spend my last cent to get him free.”
“And may your efforts be blessed by heaven,” sighed Biddy.
“I am constantly praying,” said Nellie, “that I will be shown some way to aid him. Don’t you see the poor fellow is so helpless shut there in that cell, and although I am going to see him, I know that I shall be broken-hearted to come away without him.”
As they were speaking, a beautiful span of horses and a liveried driver drove to the boathouse.