"You are a very pretty girl, Theodora," she said. "How old are you?"
"I am sixteen," answered Theo.
"Only sixteen," commented my lady. "That means only a baby in Downport, I suppose. Pamela was twenty when she came to London, and I remember—Well, never mind. Suppose you tell me something about your life at home. What have you been doing all these sixteen years?"
"I had always plenty to do," Theo answered. "I helped Pamela with the housework and the clothes-mending. We did not keep any servant, so we were obliged to do everything for ourselves."
"You were?" said the old lady, with a side-glance at the girl's slight, dusky hands. "How did you amuse yourself when your work was done?"
"We had not much time for amusements," Theo replied, demurely, in spite of her discomfort under the catechism; "but sometimes, on idle days, I read or walked on the beach with the children, or did Berlin-wool work."
"What did you read?" proceeded the august catechist. She liked to hear the girl talk.
"Love stories," more demurely still, "and poetry, and sometimes history; but not often history—love stories and poetry oftenest."
The clever old face was studying her with a novel sort of interest. Upon the whole, my lady was not sorry she had sent for Theodora North.
"And, of course, being a Downport baby, you have never had a lover. Pamela never had a lover before she came to me."