Miss Scrimp was in her dining-room, looking to the lay-out of the table
for the boarders when they came to supper, which would be in an hour or
thereabout.
Little Jessie, ever neat as far as she could be in her person, now
looked really pretty, for her new eight-cent calico dress, though
bought at a slop-shop, fitted her slight and childish form perfectly,
and she had combed out her dark curling hair until it looked like
flosses of raven silk. The very pallor of her little face made her
dark, mournful eyes more beautiful.
The girl was setting the table, assisted a little now and then by Biddy
Lanigan, who cut the bread and meat, and Miss Scrimp was superintending
it all, when she heard a carriage rattle up to the door, and a moment
later heard the door-bell ring.
Miss Scrimp had not yet changed her dress for evening, or put on her
false curls. She thought Mr. W---- might be in that carriage, as he had
been before when a carriage stopped with Hattie, and to be seen by him,
without her curls, would never do.
So she said to Jessie:
“Run to the door, and see who is there, while I run up stairs and
change my dress. If it is anybody to see me, ask ’em right into the
parlor and light the gas there, for ’twill soon be dark enough to need
it, and I look my best in gas-light.”
Jessie opened the door, and a glad cry broke from her lips when she saw
Hattie standing there, and though two ladies and an elderly gentleman
stood on the steps also, she paid no heed to them, but cried out:
“Oh, dear, good Miss Hattie, is it you? See my new dress. It is the
first I have had in such a long, long time. If any one wants to see
Miss Scrimp, I’m to take ’em right into the parlor and light up the
gas. She has gone up stairs to fix up.”
“We’ll go into the parlor, dear; there are those with me who wish to
see Miss Scrimp, and you, too. Run and light the gas.”
Jessie ran in, and Mrs. Emory, grasping Hattie’s arm, gasped out:
“You need not tell me who she is; my heart spoke the instant I saw her.
It is my child--my blessed child!”
“Be calm--come in the parlor, dear madam, and let me break it to
Jessie, or the poor girl will almost die in her joy. She has had a hard
life here. She looks scarcely fourteen, yet she is two years older.”
“That is true,” said the matron of the asylum; “we have the date of her
coming registered.”
The three ladies and Mr. Legare entered the parlor just as the blaze of
the gas in three-bracket jets came flashing out.
Jessie turned, and Hattie said, as she stood there with a wondering
look in her face:
“Jessie, do you want to be very, very happy? I have brought a lady here
who will love you so, so much if you will only let her.”
Jessie looked at Hattie, then at Mrs. Emory, whose eyes began to fill,
and, with a wild cry, sprang half way toward the latter.
“Oh, Miss Hattie!” she cried; “tell me--isn’t this the mother, the
dear mother I’ve dreamed about so long--so long?”
“It is! it is! Jessie, my child, my love, come to my arms!” cried Mrs.
Emory, tears of joy rushing in a flood from her eyes.
In a second mother and daughter sobbed in each other’s arms.
Mr. Legare wept, too, and even the matron of the asylum, hardened to
many a scene like this, stood with her handkerchief to her eyes.
Hattie alone, hearing a shuffling and well-known step coming down the
stairs, kept her composure, for she knew she would need it all.
“Sakes alive! What’s goin’ on here? Who is that that’s a-cryin’ over
my bound-girl?” cried Miss Scrimp, addressing Hattie, the only one who
confronted her.
“Hush, woman! This scene is too sacred for you to intrude upon,” said
Hattie, sternly. “There a mother, a loving mother, weeps in joy over
her long lost child, restored at last by the blessing of God to her
bosom.”
“Her child? Why, it’s Jess--my bound-girl!” sneered Miss Scrimp.
“Woman, she is your bound-girl no longer,” said the matron of the
asylum. “You deceived us when once before we came here to find her, and
falsely said she had run away from you. Now, we, who have the right,
annul the indentures, and restore her to her mother.”
“It sha’n’t be!” screamed Miss Scrimp. “She’s mine by law, and I’ll
have her, if I have to call in all the police in the ward.”
“One word more, one single threat, and I will call the police to
arrest you, and never pause in my prosecution until you rest inside a
prison’s bars, there to stay for years, as you deserve.”
Miss Scrimp shivered from head to foot when she heard those words, for
she had for an instant forgotten that she was wholly in the power of
Miss Butler.
“Oh, oh!” she sobbed, “this is the way my help is to be taken from me
after I’ve clothed and fed her for years.”
“Starved and abused her, you mean--say not fed and clothed. She has fed
on scraps, slept on rags, and if I must be a witness you will suffer
now for what you’ve done to her!” cried Hattie, too angry to care to
shield the wretched spinster in the least.
“Oh, hush! Don’t tell her that!” gasped Miss Scrimp, for, as Mrs. Emory
turned toward her, she recognized the lady she had sent away with a
falsehood when that lady came asking for Jessie Albemarle.
“Miss Butler, you dear, blessed angel, will you come home with Jessie
and me? Come as her sister and my child!” cried Mrs. Emory, taking no
more notice of Miss Scrimp than she would have done of a plaster cast
of some poor politician.
“I cannot go with you to-night, Mrs. Emory, but to-morrow I will go to
see you and your dear little daughter. To-night you want her all to
yourself, and I have some writing which I must do.”
“Then, dear Miss Hattie, I will wait till to-morrow to say what I
cannot say now to you, for my heart is too full. Come, Jessie--come,
brother--let us go. The matron will go with us; we will leave her at
the asylum as we go.”
Jessie ran and kissed Hattie over and over, and then turned and fixed
a bitter look of hatred on Miss Scrimp.
“You’ve whipped me for the last time, you toothless old brute; you can
wait on the table now yourself.”
“Come, Jessie; it is unworthy of you to notice her now. Come, my
darling.”
And Mrs. Emory took her child by the hand, and, followed by Mr. Legare
and the matron, went out to the carriage--Jessie in just the clothes
she had on when they met, without bonnet or shawl.
And Miss Scrimp, speechless with impotent anger, helpless in her rage,
stood and saw them go, and saw Hattie kiss Jessie and her mother in the
carriage, and then saw it drive off, and many of the boarders, just
coming, saw it, too, but not yet did they understand it all.
“I s’pose I’m to thank you for all this,” said Miss Scrimp, her
cross-eyes fairly green as she snapped her words short off, speaking to
Hattie.
“If you thank me for anything thank me for the mercy which yet keeps
you out of prison,” said Hattie, quietly.
“I’d like to kill you!” hissed the spinster.
“No doubt you would if you dared. But there is an eye on you which
protects me. So beware.”
Miss Scrimp shivered from head to foot, and looked all around her as if
she feared the hand of arrest to be laid upon her.
Yet Hattie had alluded to that “All-seeing eye,” which is never closed.