Suddenly Adele uttered a joyful exclamation. “I know whom it resembles!” she said. “Little Alise! She has that same sweet, half-wistful expression.”
“True!” Gertrude replied. “There is a name chiseled on the pedestal. It is so moss-grown that I cannot read it from here.” Out of curiosity the two girls dismounted, and bending, they studied for a moment the almost obliterated letters.
Suddenly Gertrude seized Adele as she exclaimed, “Della, this is almost uncanny. The first name is Alise, and the last begins with E-l, so of course it is Ellsworth. Do you suppose that can be a statue of our little Alise’s mother, and that crabbed old man Mr. Haley and the gardener were talking about, is her grandfather?”
“He might be,” Adele said as they remounted their horses. “The name Alise is uncommon, and then again, the grandfather must have been familiar with Linden Hall or he would not have sent the child there, and, of course he would be, if he had lived so near, but it doesn’t much matter who the grandfather is, since he refuses to love our little Alise.”
“I just wish that I could see him face to face,” Gertrude declared indignantly, “and I would tell him how cruel he is to leave that poor sensitive child alone among strangers.”
“I do believe that a young girl posed for that statue.”
Little did the girls dream of the interesting adventure that the finding of the statue was to bring to them in the near future.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GRANDFATHER OF ALISE
The following Friday, Madame Deriby asked the youngest teacher to ride to the station in the bus to meet a very small new pupil who was coming to Linden in the care of the conductor.