"There is some dreadful mistake!" sobbed Mildred. "My uncle was to meet me here, and I do not know what to do!" She buried her face in her handkerchief, and the next minute "Muffit's" mother had her arms around her. Then she found that the girl's name was not Muffit, but Mildred, like her own, Mildred Rowland.
When Mildred Stanhope told Mrs. Rowland her name, that motherly woman exclaimed, "Oh, Edward! What if it were our daughter left in such a trying position! She shall just come to the hotel with us and stay until we hear from her uncle. Wasn't it fortunate that that old trunk delayed us so long! We might have hurried off and never known anything about you. Well, it's all right now. Mr. Rowland shall telegraph to your uncle, and we will keep you with us until he comes."
The next two days were full of strange experiences to Mildred. The rush and roar of the great city, the life in the palatial hotel, with its seeming miles of corridors and hundreds of servants, bewildered her. In response to Mr. Rowland's telegram the reply came: "Joseph Barnard died last Wednesday. Call for letter Blank Hotel." The message was signed Derrick Jaynes. The letter, which was brought up an hour later, bore the same signature. It had been written at the request of Mrs. Barnard by her minister. It told Mildred of her uncle's sudden death, occurring the day that she left Liverpool, and had been sent to the hotel to which Mr. Barnard had intended to take his niece, Mrs. Barnard supposing that her husband had given Mildred that address in case of any slip in making connections.
The kindly old minister seemed to realize the unhappy position in which the young girl was placed, and gave minute directions regarding the journey she would have to take alone, while Mr. Rowland arranged for her comfort in the same fatherly way he would have done for his own Mildred. "What would I have done without you?" she exclaimed, in a choking voice, as she clung to Mrs. Rowland at parting. "Now I shall be adrift again, all alone in the world, as soon as you unclasp your hand."
"No, Providence will take care of you, dear," answered Mrs. Rowland. "Just keep thinking of that motto you told me about, and let us hear from you when you are safe in Carlsville."
Easter had always come to Mildred with the freshness of country meadows, with cowslips and crocuses, with the soft green of budding hedgerows and a chorus of twittering bird-calls in the old rectory garden. This year, after her long, dreary winter in Carlsville, she looked out on the roofs of the smoky little manufacturing town, and saw only red brick factories and dingy houses and dirty streets. The longing for the spring in her old English home lay in her heart like a throbbing pain. "Oh, papa," she sobbed, resting her arms on the window-sill and laying her head wearily down, "do you know all about it, dearest? Oh, if you could only tell me what to do!"
A week before, her aunt, Belle Barnard, had said, in her sickly, complaining voice, "Well, Mildred, I don't like to tell you, but I have been talking the matter over with the girls, and they think that we might as well be plain-spoken with you. Everybody thought that your Uncle Joe was a rich man, and so did we till we got the business settled up. Now we find that after the lawyers are paid there won't be enough for us all to live on comfortably. At least there wouldn't be if it wasn't for a small inheritance that Maud and Blanche have from their grandmother, and, of course, they couldn't be expected to divide that with you, and deny themselves every comfort; so I don't see any help for it but for you to get a place in some store or millinery shop, or something. We have to move in a smaller house next week."
The week had nearly gone by, and Mildred was growing desperate. Unfitted for most work, either in strength or education, she scarcely knew for what to apply, and went from one place to another at her aunt's recommendation, feeling like a forlorn little waif for whom there was no place anywhere in the world.
One afternoon she sat by her window, looking out on the early April sunshine, trying, with the hopelessness of despair, to form some plan for her future. "Why didn't I have a grandmother to leave me an inheritance like Blanche and Maud?" she thought, bitterly.