The Guests of Hercules

Taking the little girl by the shoulder not ungently, but very coldly, and as if he were in a hurry to be rid of her, he pushed rather than led her to the door. Opening it, he called the nurse. "I don't want the child," he said. "I can't have her here. Don't bring her to me again without being asked."Then the kind old woman had carried her upstairs, and in the nursery the good creature had cried over the "poor bairn" a good deal. A few words had lingered in her memory, something about its being cruel and unjust to visit the sins of others on innocent babies.A few days afterward Mary's father, with hard lines in his handsome brown face, took her to the Convent of Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake. Reverend Mother had received them. She had taken Mary on her lap; and when the child's father had gone, dark-robed women had crowded round the little girl, petting and murmuring over her: and she had been given cake and milk, and wonderful preserved fruit, such as she had never tasted.