The other lady leaned over, and studied Florence. She had a worn, faded, and fretful look; but some new expression lighted up her sallow face.
"Oh," she sighed, "what a beautiful girl! Now, if I had a daughter like that! I wonder if she lives in that forlorn old rookery?"
"A princess in disguise;" and the young man laughed.
"She was unusually lovely. At her age I had just such hair. But ah, how one fades!"
The straggling auburn hair, very thin on the top, hardly looked as if it had once been "like fine spun gold."
"The trial of my life has been not having a daughter."
Mrs. Duncan had heard this plaint very often from her half-sister, who had married a widower nearly three times her age. He had made a very liberal provision for her during her life, but at her death the fortune reverted to his family again. She had always bewailed the fact of having no children; but boys were her abomination. Mrs. Duncan's house was too noisy, with its four rollicking boys; but now that George was growing to manhood he became rather more endurable.
"I do not believe the child could have belonged there," she commenced again.
"Because she was so pretty?" asked George.
"She doesn't look like a country girl."