"A Home, then. I'll see you settled in a good Home."
Ma looked into his stern eyes, saw no relenting there, and turned to Martha. She held up her hands with the mute appeal of a child begging to be carried.
And Martha nodded. She would carry her.
"For," she explained to Sam, later, "Ma's only a child, after all. With no more sense, or as much as Sabina. Let her stay, Sam."
CHAPTER XVI
Martha had been gone but a quarter of an hour or so, when Katherine appeared at her grandmother's door.
It had become a purely perfunctory act, this pausing at the sitting-room threshold, and asking, "Can I do anything for you, grandmother?" To-night the answer was startlingly out of the ordinary.
"Yes. Come in. I want to speak to you."
The girl came forward, outwardly calm, inwardly, so shaken with a morbid dread of what might await her, that she dared not venture to speak, for fear her voice would betray her.
"Light the lamp."