Then, one blowy October day, Mawkin came to Merrylips' chamber. Her face was all red with weeping, and she blubbered out that she had been dismissed from Mistress Lowry's service. The very next morning she was to be sent packing off to Walsover. "Thou art going to Walsover?" cried Merrylips. "Why, what hast thou to weep on, thou silly Mawkin? Thou shouldst rather be smiling. Come, we'll make ready our mails against the journey." As she spoke, Merrylips started to rise from the broad window-bench where she had been sitting. But Mawkin caught her in her arms, and hugged her, and poured out her story, weeping all the while. "But I am to go alone, sweet little mistress! That wicked rebel Lowry and his sanctified wife are sending your poor Mawkin away, because she loveth you, mine own poppet, and would mind you of home, and they mean that you shall never go again unto Walsover, but stay here with them forever and ever, and forget your father and your mother!" "But wherefore?" asked poor Merrylips, who was quite dazed at this news. Many times, both on the day of Mawkin's sorrowful departure, and in the days that followed, Merrylips repeated that question. At the time she got no answer that she could understand. It was not till she was much older that she learned the reasons that had lain behind what might almost be called her captivity. Out of policy Will Lowry had kept Merrylips at Larkland. He had brothers and nephews fighting for the Parliament in the west country, where Merrylips' father was commanding a troop for the king. He believed that Sir Thomas was powerful enough to befriend these kinsmen, if they should be taken prisoners, and he believed that Sir Thomas would be more likely to do so, if Sir Thomas knew that his own little daughter was in the hands of the enemy. As a possible hostage, then, Will Lowry kept his masterful grasp on Merrylips. For a different reason Mistress Lowry was not willing to let the little girl go. She had but one child, a son who was away at school, and, as Will Lowry had said, on the day when he seized the arms at Larkland, she wanted a little daughter. Now, like many other people, Mistress Lowry thought Merrylips a sweet child, and she wanted her for her own, and so she calmly took her. Stranger still, Mistress Lowry believed that she did a praiseworthy thing in keeping the little girl from her parents and her friends. She meant to bring Merrylips up in the straitest sect of the Puritans. With such a bringing up she thought that Merrylips would be better and happier than if she were bred among her own kindred, for, according to Mistress Lowry, they were careless and evil people. No doubt Mistress Lowry, in her own way, dearly loved Merrylips, but it was a selfish and a cruel way.