"What?" gasped Ruth, very much interested.
"She looked a sight like her," said Aunt Alvirah, laughing to herself at the remembrance. "Yet I knowed Maggie had gone upstairs to make the beds, and this here girl who had knocked on the door was all dressed up."
"'Why, Maggie!' says I. And she says, kinder tart-like:
"'I ain't Maggie. But I want to see her.'
"So I axed her in; but she wouldn't come. I seen then maybe she was a little younger than Maggie is. Howsomever I called to Maggie, and she went out, and the two of 'em walked up and down the road for an hour. The other gal never come in. And I seen her start back toward Cheslow. Maggie never said no word about her from that day to this.
"Do you know what I think about it, Ruthie?" concluded Aunt Alvirah.
"No, Aunt Alvirah," said the girl of the Red Mill, reflectively.
"I think that was Maggie's sister. Maybe she works out for somebody in Cheslow."
Ruth merely nodded. She did not think much of that phase of the matter. What she was really puzzling over was her memory of the girl she and Helen had interviewed on the island in Lake Remona before the Christmas holidays.
That girl had looked very much like Maggie, too!