“What are you thinking, dear?” she asked.
“I was wondering about my own mother,” Nan replied. “Next week I will be eighteen and then it was that Manna Lou planned telling me who I am, I never could understand why she did not tell me before, but she said that she had promised, and now, that I might know, I am too far away.”
“Perhaps your mother was a sister of Manna Lou,” her friend suggested.
“Perhaps, but come dear,” Nan added in a brighter tone, “we are due even now at French Conversation.”
Nan did not speak again of the mystery of her birth, but she often wondered about it as her eighteenth birthday neared and she longed to know more of her own mother, who must have loved her so dearly.
CHAPTER XXVI.
NAN’S EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY.
Nan Barrington’s eighteenth birthday dawned gloriously and as soon as they were dressed Phyllis disappeared to return a moment later with an armful of wonderful red roses.
“It’s a happy birthday greeting from a cousin of mine,” she laughingly told the surprised girl.
“Oh, are they from Peggy Dorchester?” Nan exclaimed as she took them.
Her friend’s eyes twinkled. “No,” she said “this cousin’s name is not Peg. Guess again.”