“Lucinda Outhouse.”
“Oh, yes! I knew ’twas a shed, or some kind of a barn. Her name’s Lucy-vindy Outhouse.”
“Outhouse, Outhouse!” exclaimed the Quaker. “I never knew but one man of that name; and he married a good friend of mine,—Lucinda Fearing. But they went to Ohio. This can’t be Lucinda’s child.”
“Why, perhaps it is. We will send for Hop-clover, and you shall talk with her,” said Mrs. Pitcher, looking very much interested.
“How glad I should be if it is Lucinda’s child! Liddy and I thought so much of Lucinda!”
“She’s lame. Posy used to call her a hypocrite,” said Teddy. Whereupon Posy blushed, and hid behind her mother.
“Poor little girl! So she is lame? I’m sorry,” said the kind Quaker, looking sober, though he had never heard of Hop-clover before. He seemed to forget that he had invited company; and, without waiting to hear whether they could go or not, he kept on asking questions about the lame girl.
When he heard her mother was dead, he sighed, and said, “Poor thing, poor thing!” And, when he heard she lived alone with a bad step-father, he wiped his spectacles, as if this touched him far more than Eliza’s killing flies.
“Did thee say I could see the child?”