“Is Polly going to stay in this house?” asked Mrs. Hamilton.

“She is,” was the reply.

“Then I leave to-night,” said Mrs. Hamilton.

“Very well, you can go,” returned the husband, growing stronger in himself each moment.

Mrs. Hamilton turned away to her own room, where she remained until supper time, when Lenora asked “If she had got her chest packed, and where they should direct their letters!” Neither Margaret nor her father could refrain from laughter.

Mrs. Hamilton, too, who had no notion of leaving the comfortable Homestead, and who thought this as good a time to veer round as any she would have, also joined in the laugh, saying, “What a child you are, Lenora!”

Gradually the state of affairs at the homestead was noised throughout the village, and numerous were the little tea parties where none dared speak above a whisper to tell what they had heard, and where each and every one were bound to the most profound secrecy, for fear the reports might not be true.  At length, however, the story of the china closet got out, causing Sally Martin to spend one whole day in retailing the gossip from door to door.  Many, too, suddenly remembered certain suspicious things which they had seen in Mrs. Hamilton, who was unanimously voted to be a bad woman, and who, of course, began to be slighted.

The result of this was to increase the sourness of her disposition; and life at the Homestead would have been one continuous scene of turmoil had not Margaret wisely concluded to treat whatever her stepmother did with silent contempt.  Lenora, too, always seemed ready to fill up all vacant niches, until even Mag acknowledged that the mother would be unendurable without the daughter.

CHAPTER IX.

LENORA AND CARRIE.

Ever since the day on which Lenora had startled Carrie by informing her of her danger, she had been carefully kept from the room, or allowed only to enter it when Margaret was present.  One afternoon, however, early in February, Mag had occasion to go to the village.  Lenora, who saw her depart, hastily gathered up her work, and repaired to Carrie’s room, saying, as she entered it, “Now, Carrie, we’ll have a good time; Mag has gone to see old deaf Peggy, who asks a thousand questions, and will keep her at least two hours, and I am going to entertain you to the best of my ability.”

Carrie’s cheek flushed, for she felt some misgivings with regard to the nature of Lenora’s entertainment; but she knew there was no help for it, so she tried to smile, and said, “I am willing you should stay, Lenora, but you mustn’t talk bad things to me, for I can’t bear it.”

“Bad things!” repeated Lenora; “who ever heard me talk bad things!  What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Carrie, “that you must not talk about your mother as you sometimes do.  It is wicked.”

“Why, you dear little thing,” answered Lenora, “don’t you know that what would be wicked for you isn’t wicked for me?”