Then Nelly remembered; but still she looked bewildered.
"Oh, yes! Mrs. Williams. I remember you very, very well," she said; "but you don't look a bit as you used to."
"Come here! come here!" shouted Arthur; "come right here, all of you! Mamma, who is this girl, and what makes you kiss her?"
Arthur had been so long used to being the only child, and having all his mother's affection showered upon him, that he really felt uncomfortable to see her kiss another child.
"Why, Arthur! Arthur!" exclaimed his mother, leading Nelly and Rob towards him; "don't speak so. These are old friends of mamma's that she knew before she ever saw you. Don't you recollect my telling you about the little boy in the cars, that threw away the onions, and the little girl that had the nice wax doll all broken in the crowd? These are those very same children; and isn't it wonderful that we should have found them here? I am very glad to see them: Nelly, Rob, this is my little boy, Arthur, and he will be more glad to know you than you can possibly imagine; for he can't run about as you do. He has to lie in this chair all day."
While she was speaking, Arthur had been looking very steadily at Rob. He did not take much notice of Nelly. As soon as his mother stopped speaking, Arthur said to Rob:—
"How do you do? Mamma told me all about your throwing away the man's onions ever so long ago, and I used to make her tell me over and over and over again, till she said it was almost as bad as having onions in the house. Didn't you have fun when you did it?" and Arthur laughed harder than he had been seen to laugh for a long time.
"Why, no!" said Rob; "I don't think it was much fun. I don't remember much about it now; but I know I felt awfully mean: you see I felt like a thief when the man began to look for his onions."
Nelly was standing still, close to her new-found friend. She was thoroughly bewildered; she looked from Mrs. Williams to Arthur, and from Arthur to Mrs. Williams, and did not know what to make of it all: and no wonder. When Mrs. Williams bade Nelly good-by in Denver three years before, she was a thin, pale lady, dressed in the deepest black, and with a face so sad it made you feel like crying to look at her. She wore a widow's cap close around her face, and a long, black veil; and she was all alone with her nurse; and she had no little boy. Now she was a stout, rosy-faced lady; and she wore a bright, dark-blue cloth gown, looped up over a scarlet petticoat; and on her head she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with scarlet poppies and blue bachelor's buttons round the crown. At last Nelly could not contain her perplexity any longer.
"Oh! Mrs. Williams," she exclaimed; "what does make you so pretty now?"