"It must be a great change for you," Agnes observed meaningly. Then, as her companion coloured with annoyance, she continued: "I hear Dr. Reed has the best paying practices in the place, he attends all the rich families, and yet they say he was a mere nobody to commence with—I mean, he has made his position himself."
"Yes," assented Violet, curtly.
"I heard one of the girls say that his relations—they live in Devonshire, I believe—are all working people, and that his mother was only a servant."
"Nonsense!" cried Violet, sceptical about the latter statement. "I know his father was a farmer in Devonshire, and his mother is still living—I have seen her likeness. She looks a dear old soul; she couldn't have been a servant."
"Well, of course you would know as the Reeds are such friends of yours," said Agnes, "but I was certainly told it as a fact."
"I don't think it can be true, but I'll ask Ann," Violet replied, eager to be in the position to contradict what she considered an idle report.
And ask Ann Violet did that same day, after they had prepared their lessons in the evening, in the upstairs room which had formerly been Ann's nursery. They were gathering together their books when Violet, with some hesitation, commenced:—
"Oh, Ann, I want to ask you something; but, before I tell you what it is, you must promise you will not be offended with me."
"I promise," Ann replied, smiling; "what is it?"
"Well, I was talking to Agnes Hosking to-day—she is a very inquisitive sort of girl, you know—and she said that someone had told her that—that your grandmother, your father's mother—"