“Oh, oh!” she sobbed, “this is the way my help is to be taken from me after I’ve clothed and fed her for years.”
“Starved and abused her, you mean—say not fed and clothed. She has fed on scraps, slept on rags, and if I must be a witness you will suffer now for what you’ve done to her!” cried Hattie, too angry to care to shield the wretched spinster in the least.
“Oh, hush! Don’t tell her that!” gasped Miss Scrimp, for, as Mrs. Emory turned toward her, she recognized the lady she had sent away with a falsehood when that lady came asking for Jessie Albemarle.
“Miss Butler, you dear, blessed angel, will you come home with Jessie and me? Come as her sister and my child!” cried Mrs. Emory, taking no more notice of Miss Scrimp than she would have done of a plaster cast of some poor politician.
“I cannot go with you to-night, Mrs. Emory, but to-morrow I will go to see you and your dear little daughter. To-night you want her all to yourself, and I have some writing which I must do.”
“Then, dear Miss Hattie, I will wait till to-morrow to say what I cannot say now to you, for my heart is too full. Come, Jessie—come, brother—let us go. The matron will go with us; we will leave her at the asylum as we go.”
Jessie ran and kissed Hattie over and over, and then turned and fixed a bitter look of hatred on Miss Scrimp.
“You’ve whipped me for the last time, you toothless old brute; you can wait on the table now yourself.”
“Come, Jessie; it is unworthy of you to notice her now. Come, my darling.”
And Mrs. Emory took her child by the hand, and, followed by Mr. Legare and the matron, went out to the carriage—Jessie in just the clothes she had on when they met, without bonnet or shawl.