“You have, indeed!” said Chester, heartily kissing the wistful-eyed child.
“I’m glad,” said Ladybird; and with her queer suddenness, she walked away.
“Just suppose,” said Ladybird to Cloppy, as she strolled toward the house—“just suppose, Clops, that we hadn’t sent for Chester, and suppose—but that’s too perfectly horrid to suppose—that Stella had still been intending to marry that unpleasant Charley Hayes. For as you well know, Cloppy, Charley Hayes is not fit to tie Stella’s apron-string. Of course she doesn’t wear aprons, but I mean if she did. And now everything is beautiful: my aunts are happy as clams; Stella and Chester are happy as oysters; and you and I are happy as—as whales, aren’t we, Clops?”
She flung the dog high in the air and caught him as he came down; and then running into the house, discovered a letter for herself on the hall table. With a curious glance at the foreign epistle, Ladybird took it, and holding Cloppy firmly under her arm, went up to her bedroom.
“You see, Clops,” she said as she reached her haven from all interruption—“you see, Clops, we’ve got a letter now that means something. Of course I love Stella and Chester, and Aunt Priscilla and Aunt Dorinda, but furthermore, and beyond, and notwithstanding, there is something in our lives, Cloppy, that is outside of all these, and of course, my blessed dog, it would be postmarked India. And so, Cloppy, we will now sit down and read it.”
Read it they did; and in the quaint, old-fashioned bedroom at Primrose Hall, Ladybird read these words:
My dear Miss Lovell:
I am writing you, as you will observe, from London, and I am the daughter of John Lovell and Lavinia Flint. This daughter, they tell me, you think you are; but it is not so: you are the daughter of John Lovell and his second wife; while I am the child of Mr. Lovell and his first wife, who was Lavinia Flint.
My attorney, Mr. William H. Ward, tells me that he recently met a Mr. Bond who sent you to Primrose Hall thinking you were the daughter of Lavinia Flint. But you are not the right one, and I am, so you see you will have to resign your supposed rights in favor of me. Mr. Ward is dictating this letter for me to write; and as soon as I hear from you I shall go straight to Plainville, and as I have proper identifications of all sorts, I shall claim my birthright.
Yours very truly, Lavinia Lovell.
“It is just as I thought, Cloppy,” said Ladybird, shaking the moppy dog, and looking straight into his blinky brown eyes; “it is just as I thought, and we are not Flints, after all; but goodness gracious me, Cloppy, I’d rather be a Flint than anything else in this world, and I’d rather be Lavinia Lovell than—than—than Ladybird, though I never realized it before.”
A deep sob interrupted this last utterance, and Ladybird flung her face down on the little dog and cried bitterly.
But after a time she calmed herself and said: