Indeed, Lucina would have considered herself highly false and treacherous had she manifested an inclination to be the partner of any other than her father.

Sometimes the Squire sat smoking and dozing, and sometimes he was away, and in those cases Mrs.Merritt sewed, and Jerome and Lucina played checkers.
It tried Jerome sorely to capture Lucina's men and bar her out from the king-row, and she sometimes chid him for careless playing.
Sometimes, after Jerome was gone and Lucina in bed, Abigail Merritt, who had always a kind but furtively keen eye upon the two young people, talked a little anxiously to the Squire.

"I know that he does not come regularly and he sees us all, but--I don't know that it is wise for us to let them be thrown so much together," she would say, with a nervous frown on her little dark face.
The Squire's forehead wrinkled with laughter, but he was finishing his pipe before going to bed, and would not remove it.

He rolled humorously inquiring eyes through the cloud of smoke, and his wife answered as if to a spoken question.

"I know Jerome Edwards doesn't seem like other young men, but he is a young man, after all, and, if we shouldn't say it, I am afraid somebody will get hurt.