“Oh, yes; Georgie must.”
“No, no! A’n’t a-going to!”
“This is the way you encourage disobedience in my children!” exclaimed Mrs. Dainty, as she swept into the room at the moment when Miss Harper was stooping down to kiss the little boy in the fulness of her swelling love. “Out of my house! and quickly!”
Grasping George by an arm, she bore him, screaming, from the room; and, as his cries came back to her from the distance, Miss Harper could hear mingling with them the sound of passionate blows.
“Poor children!” she said. “There is good in them, but how sadly overgrown by weeds! With such a mother, what hope is there? But I must not linger here. For their sakes I would have remained, even though suffering insult daily. No choice is left me, however, and I must go.”
As Miss Harper passed the door of Mrs. Dainty’s room, on her way down-stairs, dressed to leave the house, she heard the sobbing of George and Madeline, mingled with stormy words that were passing between Agnes and her mother. The purport of these she did not stop to hear, but hurried on, and, without seeing or speaking to any one, took her silent departure.
CHAPTER VII.
A REVELATION.
“Florence!” Miss Harper stopped suddenly, and looked up in a bewildered manner.
“Florence!” repeated the voice of Uncle John.
“Mr. Fleetwood!” She could only utter the kind old man’s name in a low, choking voice.