"Your mother—is she dead?" he asked gently.
She nodded. "She's dead. I never saw her—never. I'd love to see her just a-coming and standing by my bed. I'd not be a bit frightened."
"But if you have never seen her you would not know she was your mother," he replied, impressed by the passionate assertion of her manner.
"Oh, I'd know her! I'd know her!" said the child, with vivid assurance. "Soon as she'd come in I'd know her. She was a lady."
"A lady!" he repeated. "How do you know? What do you mean?"
"Tilly told me. Tilly's dead," answered Meg with ardor. "She told it to me once before; and I went to see her at the hospital, and she said it again. She said, 'Meg, your mother was a lady—the sweetest, prettiest, ladiest lady'—that's what she said; 'and, Meg, be good for her sake.'" She paused, her eyes continuing to hold his with excited conviction. "That's how I know she was a lady," Meg resumed; "and I know what a lady is. The Misses Grantums down there"—infusing scorn into her voice as she pointed to the floor to indicate she meant lodgers who lived below—"they're not ladies though they've fine dresses; but they have loud voices, and they scold. I go to the corners of the streets. I watch the carriages. I see the ladies in them; and when I see one gentle and a-smiling like an angel, I say mother was like one of these. That's how I'd know what she'd be like. And," she added more slowly, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper and advancing a step, "I have a picture of her. Would you like to see it?"
"I would," he answered, thinking that at last he was approaching a clew to the mystery.
She dashed off, and in a moment returned with something carefully wrapped up in tissue paper, and gently drew out a limp picture, that she held out at arm's length before the young man, keeping it out of his reach.
"There, I'm sure she'd be like that—all smiling, you see. And those beautiful curls, are they not lovely? and those large eyes and those roses? I'm sure she'd be just like that."
"But let me hold it—just with my finger tips," he pleaded, as the child jealously held the print away from him.