"And why did you leave there?" asked the man pleasantly.
"The major died, and Aunt Hester didn't have enough money to live there, so she and Billy and I came to the little brown house. It is a nice little house, only it isn't very big."
"Billy is your brother?"
"No, not exactly; he is almost though," returned Ruth a little doubtfully. She did not want to seem to deny Billy. "His name is Billy Beatty," she added.
"I suppose then he is a nephew of your aunt as you are her niece."
"Yes." Ruth felt that this was quite the truth.
"Your aunt's name is Brackenbury, then, or is it Beatty?" asked the man abruptly after a few minutes' silence.
"It is Brackenbury." Ruth wondered at the many questions. "This is where I live," she told him when they had reached the gate. "Goodbye. Thank you very much for helping me catch Stray."
Then, as the man stood looking at her with that same searching expression, she felt impelled to ask: "What was your little girl's name?"
"It wasn't my own little girl of whom I was thinking, but of the child of my dead brother, my little niece, Ruth Mayfield, who might well have looked like you."