“I think so,” soberly Sidney replied. “Seeing you and hearing you say these things makes me feel as I always have,—that I belong!”
“Indeed you do, my child. I’d like to see any one take you away from us! But I know that you are anxious to hear how it all happened. Let me see. You were seventeen in September, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then eighteen years ago or so your mother had something of a collapse after undertaking too many things socially. In the middle of the winter I took her to California, and when it grew warm, we went immediately to the cottage in Wisconsin for the summer. We did not even stop in Chicago and your mother only longed for the woods and the little lake. We lived quietly, though I had to go back and forth. There were the usual servants, though your mother did not want many around. No one lived in the cottage except one quite intelligent girl who was a nurse, on her vacation, and just the one to stay with your mother.
“They were outdoors as much as possible and your mother began to get her tone again, even telling me that she must go back to Chicago, to avoid the necessity of my frequent trips. But I persuaded her to stay through October at least, or a part of it, if I remember correctly.
“Once this young woman who was with your mother stopped with her at her home and there your mother found you, about two months old by that time, they said, and unusually pretty. They tell me though that a kiddie does not look like anything till it is about three months old. It was a new interest, and when your mother found that your mother and father were dead and that these good people had taken you for their daughter’s friend, your aunt, also a nurse, she began to wonder if she might not have the baby herself. You were like a new doll to her, Sidney, and she was temporarily disgusted with so much society.
“She began to visit the country home, to take pictures of the baby, to get pretty clothes for it,—you can imagine how your mother would.”
“Yes,” laughed Sidney, and the two who loved Mrs. Thorne so dearly exchanged understanding glances.
“We learned that your parents were people above reproach and as your mother found that their name, Sampson, was one in the Standish lineage, she let your aunt go on about the Standishes to her heart’s content. But I think that your mother has almost forgotten about your having no real connection with our immediate ancestry.”
“I suppose so,” mechanically answered Sidney, stunned at the new name.