"You, Lady Moreham?" breathed Faith in amazement.
"Ah, yes, it was I," sighed the lady. "So memory tells me, at least, but I can scarcely believe that the happy, care-free little creature, who chased butterflies, and gathered the trailing arbutus in Spring, and waded through the gorgeous October leaves in Fall, was my weary self."
"And you really liked being—being—"
My lady laughed out at Hope's embarrassment in framing her question.
"Oh! Didn't I like it? I had two sisters and a brother. One sister was a baby, and when the rest of us had done our 'stints' for the day, we used to take her out with us in her little four-wheeled wagon father had made her, and play by the hour—oh, so happily! I used to play at being queen, I remember, and make crowns out of burdock burs, stuck together, setting them on very softly over my curls in the coronation scene, because they pricked me so. But in spite of the hurt I would persist in wearing them. I sometimes wonder, is all that we do in childhood but a foreshadowing of what is to follow? My crowns have always cut me cruelly, but pride has kept me wearing them."
She drew herself up quickly, as if she had been thinking aloud, and added,
"Your grandfather's farm adjoined ours, and your father and I were playmates, and great friends. We were seldom separated till later, when I was a strong, rosy-cheeked girl of sixteen and he a strapping young lad, with a hankering for the sea. Well, we went our ways—he to sail as cabin-boy in a merchantman, I to journey up to Boston and seek service with some nice family."
"Service!" murmured Hope, involuntarily.
"It sounds queer, doesn't it? Yes, that was what I expected to do, and I was proud to be able to help at home, for the little farm was not productive, and the 'lien' on it was heavy. But I did not 'work out,' after all—in that way—my sister, who was now married and living in Lynn, found a place for me in the factory there. Like Hannah, I often was seen sitting at the window binding shoes."
"Oh! In Lynn. No wonder you were so interested when we talked about it."