“Perhaps.”
Shirley dressed for dinner early. There was no telling when Mr. Thorne might come. She was ready to slip on coat, hat and furs when the chauffeur rang the bell. Soon she was in the car which she had so mistaken yesterday and in conversation with Mr. Thorne, who looked at her in puzzled but kindly fashion. “Even your voice, Miss Shirley, is like my daughter’s. Wearing her clothes, you might utterly deceive me if you tried.”
“I shall not try, Mr. Thorne; but you would find differences, if you were with me for any length of time. Try to find them this time; I shall not mind.”
“What I thought, that I might find is some common ancestor who may account for this,” smiled Mr. Thorne. “You must tell us all about your family and I want Mrs. Thorne to hear it. Now you must tell me how you like Chicago. Have you been up in our sky-scrapers, and have you seen the other features that we can furnish?”
“I did most of that last summer, when I was here. It was a better time than the winter, though the weather has been better than usual, Mrs. Holland says, for the ‘Windy City.’”
It was a curious experience for Shirley. She found Sidney’s home more beautiful and luxurious than that of the Hollands. Mrs. Thorne was charmingly gracious, as puzzled as her husband, and even more interested in affairs of Shirley’s family. Served by the butler at the table, Shirley tried not to make any mistakes, for the sake of her mother, whose household was conducted just as daintily, but by necessity, much more simply.
“Yes,” said Shirley, when asked about her ancestry, “my aunt, Miss Dudley, takes a great interest in those things. She says that we are descended from Governor Thomas Dudley, the second governor of Massachusetts, and that ’way back we came from William the Conqueror. That is on Mother’s side, and I think she said Harcourt was a name in the line, too.”
“Why, my dear,” said Mrs. Thorne to her husband, “Aunt Abby found that the Thornes are descended from William the Conqueror through Mary Thorne, who was the mother of Susanna Thorne; and Susanna Thorne, if I remember correctly, was the mother of Governor Dudley.”
Mrs. Thorne sent a maid for a certain book in the library which contained the proper authority for her statement, together with a paper on which Miss Standish, who was “Aunt Abby,” Shirley found, had recorded the Standish and Thorne lines. So Sidney had been brought up on this!
“My aunt,” said Mrs. Thorne, “is very proud of our Standish line and has made Sidney think more of that than of her father’s, especially as he makes fun of it all. Here is your Dudley motto, Shirley: ‘Nec gladio nec arcu.’ Can you translate it?”