“I promise,” gasped Miss Scrimp.
“Next, I want you to put enough on the table for your boarders to eat, so that they need not arise from the table hungry.”
“It’ll ruin me, but I’ll do it,” moaned the hapless woman, fairly writhing at the thought.
“I will ask no more promises now. If you keep what you have made you will have no cause to regret it. But there are a few questions for you to answer. You have got Jessie Albemarle bound out to you till she reaches the age of eighteen?”
“Yes, I got her from the asylum.”
“What do you know about her parentage?”
“Nothing, for sure, except what they told me at the asylum. They said she was left there a baby, in nice clothes, with a lot of fine things in a basket. There was a gold necklace around her neck, and on the clasp the name, Jessie Albemarle, and in the basket a note asking she might be kept tenderly, for some day she’d be called for. And they kept her there, and taught her readin’, and writin’, and ’rithmetic, and all that, till she was over twelve years old, and then I got her. She hasn’t growed a bit since, though she is over fifteen now.”
“No wonder, for you have starved and worked her almost to death. But this cruelty shall go no farther; henceforth she shall be treated at least like a human being.”
“Oh, Miss Hattie, aren’t you going to have any mercy on me?”
“All, and even more than you deserve, Miss Scrimp. But I am not done with my questions yet. A lady called here not long ago to ask after Jessie Albemarle?”