“Prove it,” he said tauntingly.  “That’s all!  Prove it!” Then suddenly remembering that time was flying, he changed his tone.  “Well, anyhow, you can settle all that to your liking later on, I can’t stay to argue now.  I’ve married again, and my wife keeps a lodging-house, and wants some one to help her, some one strong and healthy, like Jessie here, and I’ve come for her.  I didn’t see the fun of paying a girl, when we could get a better one for nothing; and I came for her to-day because I thought it would be nice and quiet, not too many about, and not too many leave-takings.  Now, Jess, say good-bye to your granny, I want to be off before the old man gets back, so as to spare him the pain,” with a cruel laugh.

Was there no one to help them!  No one to appeal to!  Jessie and her grandmother looked at each other despairingly.  They could think of no one within a mile or two, except Mrs. Maddock and her little maid, and how could they reach them, and what could they do to help if they did!  A deep, hopeless despair settled on both of them.

“If you’ve anything you wants to bring along with you,” said her father curtly, “look sharp and get it.  I don’t s’pose it’s more than I can carry.”

Jessie was too stunned to know quite what she was doing.  In her room she had a big old-fashioned carpet bag that her grandfather had once given her because she so admired the flowers on its sides, and into this she thrust some of her clothes without in the least realizing what she was doing.  When, though, she came to her little shelf of books, to a box Miss Grace had given her, a work-basket her grandfather and grandmother had bought her on her birthday, and a picture which had been Miss Barley’s present, she stayed her hand.  She would not take any of her treasures to be knocked about perhaps in a busy lodging-house.  She would leave them here, they would seem like a link between her and home—­for no other place would ever be “home” to her, she knew.

She took her little Prayer-book, the one that had been her mother’s, granny had given it to her on her eighth birthday, and she treasured it dearly; it had her mother’s name and her own written in it, and that seemed always to draw them nearer and form a little link between.

It was all soon over, and Jessie, without daring to look around her beloved little room again, crept away back to her granny, her eyes blinded with tears.

“Granny, you’ll ’tend to my rose for me, won’t you,” she whispered in a choked voice, “till I come home again, and—­and kiss granp for me, and—­oh, granny, granny, what shall I do, I can’t go away!  I can’t!  I can’t!  I think I shall die if—­”

Perhaps mercifully, her father cut the leave-taking short.  No good could be done, not a fraction of their misery lessened by prolonging it, and before Jessie had finished sobbing out her last words, he had picked her up and carried her down-stairs and out of the house.