CHAPTER V.
SURPRISES.
The confession had been made, the story told, and, to her unspeakable joy and relief, Huldah had not been sent to Uncle Tom or to the workhouse.

The latter fate she had dreaded even more than the former, for if she had been sent to the workhouse she certainly would have had to part with Dick; whereas, if she had gone back to the caravan, she would have had both him and Charlie, and she would rather endure hunger and beatings than lose Dick.
She had, though, escaped both fates, and life for the time seemed to Huldah almost too beautiful to be anything but a dream, for it had been arranged that both she and Dick were to stay on for the present with Martha Perry in the cottage.

Since the night of the attempted robbery Mrs.Perry had been very ailing and nervous.

She could not bear Dick to leave the house, when once twilight began to fall, and she would not have stayed there at all at night without him.

She had grown to rely on the lanky yellow creature as though he had been a man.