"Oh, I can't! if you kill me I can't," said Katy, with white lips, and clinging to the side of the cellar door. "But I say you shall," said the old lady, unclinching Katy's hands; "don't you belong to me, I'd like to know? and can't I do with you as I like?" "No!" said Ruth, receiving the fainting form of her frightened child; "no!" "Doctor! doctor!" said the old lady, trembling with rage; "are you master in this house or not?" "Yes--when _you_ are out of it," growled the doctor; "what's to pay now?" "Why, matter enough. Here's Ruth," said the old lady, not noticing the doctor's taunt; "Ruth interfering between me and Katy. If you will order her out of the house, I will be obliged to you. I've put up with enough of this meddling, and it is the last time she shall cross this threshold." "You never spoke a truer word," said Ruth, "and my child shall cross it for the last time with me." "Humph!" said the doctor, "and you no better than a beggar! The law says if the mother can't support her children, the grand-parents shall do it." "The mother _can_--the mother _will_," said Ruth. "I have already earned enough for their support." "Well, if you have, which I doubt, I hope _you earned it honestly_," said the old lady. Ruth's heightened color was the only reply to this taunt. Tying her handkerchief over Katy's bare head, and wrapping the trembling child in a shawl she had provided, she bore her to a carriage, where Mr. Walter and his brother-in-law, (Mr. Grey,) with little Nettie, awaited them; the door was quickly closed, and the carriage whirled off. The two gentlemen alternately wiped their eyes, and looked out the window as Katy, trembling, crying, and laughing, clung first to her mother, and then to little Nettie, casting anxious, frightened glances toward the prison she had left, as the carriage receded. Weeping seemed to be infectious. Ruth cried and laughed, and Mr. Grey and Mr. Walter seemed both to have lost the power of speech. Little Nettie was the first to break the spell by offering to lend Katy her bonnet. "We will do better than that," said Ruth, smiling through her tears; "we will get one for Katy when we stop. See here, Katy;" and Ruth tossed a purse full of money into Katy's lap. "You know, mother said she would come for you as soon as she earned the money." "Yes, and I _knew_ you would, mother; but--it was so very--" and the child's lips began to quiver again. "She is so excited, poor thing," said Ruth, drawing her to her bosom; "don't talk about it now, Katy; lean your head on me and take a nice nap;" and the weary child nestled up to her mother, while Nettie put one finger on her lip, with a sagacious look at Mr. Walter, as much as to say, "_I_ will keep still if _you_ will." "She does not resemble you as much as Nettie does," said Mr. Grey to Ruth, in a whisper.