"About myself?" she said questioningly, surprised at this demand.
"Yes. Tell me all you told my father last night. I want to hear the story from your lips—the story of your life. Sit down."
She took a chair by his side, and complied with his request, whilst he turned his eyes away from her face and listened. She lingered over her account of those better days when her mother had earned sufficient money to supply their wants, and touched as lightly as possible on the time subsequent to her attack of typhoid fever; and, as she talked, she observed him closely, and noticed that his face bore traces of suffering, and that there were dark rims beneath his eyes.
"And your friends—this Mr. and Mrs. M'Cosh—paid for your mother's funeral," he said when she had concluded her tale, "and those are the people who would like to adopt you?"
She assented.
He laughed; something in the idea seemed to amuse him. Then he grew suddenly serious, and looked at her with grave attention as he observed slowly—
"You have seen a great deal of the seamy side of life, but there are easier times in store for you, I've little doubt. You'll have to forget the past now."
"I don't want to forget it, I hope I never shall," Felicia responded with a touch of indignation in her tone. "I want to remember it always—always. We were not unhappy, mother and I, we had each other, and now—and now—" She paused and caught her breath with a sob. "You don't understand," she added confusedly.
"I think I do. I, too, know what it means to lose a mother. It is just possible, is it not, that my mother may have been as much to me as yours was to you?"
"Oh, yes, indeed!" she answered, touched by the gentleness of his tone.