With a blush mantling her cheek: the little girl exclaimed—
“Her mother is a wicked woman, Ma, and don’t make her happy, nor teach her to be good. If Madge has lost her, and you let her live with us and be a mother to her, she will be a good deal better off, and much happier than she could be with her own mother.”
“Spoken like a philosopher!” exclaimed Uncle Morris. “The loss of a drunken mother is not, indeed, a thing to mourn over, especially if that loss brings with it the gain of a home in which Love is the perpetual President—but I suspect from your pa’s looks that Madge’s mother is not wholly lost, yet.”
“Why! didn’t pa say he couldn’t find her?” said Jessie, looking with a puzzled air at her father.
“Not exactly, my dear,” replied Mr. Carlton. “I said I had not seen her, which is true; but I have heard of her, as I suppose; for a strange woman did go to the tavern about the time Madge was left, and is now in jail as a drunken vagrant.”
“Oh, how shocking!” exclaimed Jessie.
Mr. Carlton now told all he had heard about the supposed Mrs. Clifton, and it was agreed that Uncle Morris should see her in the morning and learn if she was, indeed, the poor child’s mother.
After tea, Jessie hurried to the kitchen to look after her protégé. She found her so changed by her washing and new dress, that notwithstanding her high expectations, she could hardly believe her to be the same Madge she had seen sitting there an hour before. But Madge it was, as bright and good-looking a girl as could be found anywhere, in or out of Duncanville.
“Have you had enough to eat, Madge?” inquired Jessie, scarcely knowing how to act the part of an agreeable hostess.
“Indade, miss, but she has eaten more like a hungry pig than a gal,” said Mary, before Madge had time to reply.