"Lydia, I do think you're bringing up the child Mercy like a regular heathen. She asks me questions as 'ud break her poor father, my son Robert's heart ef he was to hear. She's a good child, but she's that puzzling. You bid her mind her sampler, and not worry an old woman, Lydia Purcell."
Lydia's eyes gazed stormily at Cecile.
"I'll bid her see and do what she's told," she said, going up to the little girl and giving her a shake. "You go out of the house this minute, miss, and don't let me never see you slinking into this yere room again without my leave." She took the child to the door and shut it on her.
Mrs. Bell began to remonstrate feebly. "Lydia, don't be harsh on my little Mercy," she began. "I like to have her along o' me. I'm mostly alone, and the child makes company."
"Yes, but you have no time for her this morning, for, as I've told you a score of times already to-day, Mr. Preston is coming," replied Lydia.
Now Mr. Preston was Mrs. Bell's attorney, and next to her religion, which was most truly real and abiding in her poor old heart, she loved her attorney.
CHAPTER VIII.
"THE UNION."
Lydia had just then plenty of cause for anxiety; for that kind of anxiety which such a woman would feel. She was anxious about the gold she had been so carefully saving, putting by here a pound and there a pound, until the bank held a goodly sum sufficient to support her in comfort in the not very distant day when her residence in Warren's Grove would come to an end.