The child turned to stare her own amazement. She changed color, too, for she knew she had done wrong to run away; but she smiled with both eyes and lips, for she was glad to see Ruth.
“My mercy!” she ejaculated. “If it ain’t Miss Fielding! How-do, Miss Fielding? Ain’t it enough to give one their nevergitovers to see you here?”
“And how do you suppose I feel to find you here at Beach Plum Point,” demanded Ruth, “when we all thought you were so nicely fixed with Mr. and Mrs. Perkins? And Mrs. Holmes wrote to me only the other day that you seemed contented.”
“That’s right, Miss Fielding,” sighed the actor’s child. “I was. And Miz Perkins was always nice to me. Nothing at all like Aunt Suse Timmins. But, you see, they ain’t like pa.”
“Did your father bring you here?”
“No’m.”
“Nor send for you?”
“Not exactly,” confessed Bella.
“Well!”
“You see, he sent me money. Only on Tuesday. Forty dollars.”