"Where?"
"From the Alms House!"
Aunt Hannah's eyes fell. A faint color crept through the wrinkles on her forehead, and for a few moments she ceased to interrogate the child. But she spoke at length in the same impassive voice as before:
"Have you a father?"
"No, ma'am."
"A mother?"
"She is dead."
"Who is Isabel?"
"A little girl that was with me in"—she was about to say in the Alms House; but more sensitive regarding Isabel than herself, she changed the term and said, "that was with me in the carriage."
"The carriage," repeated aunt Hannah, moving toward a window and lifting the paper blind, "did it take four horses to drag you and another little girl over the mountains?"