Then she told all the droll stories she could remember about Poll, Mrs. Goldberg’s parrot; and about the wonderful day Emma Fames had spent with her at Willow Grove and how she had saved Jane and Christopher from the bear.
“This mention of the twins and Willow Grove set Mrs. Hartwell-Jones thinking of the letter she had received from the children’s mother. Both she and grandmother had written to Mrs. Baker, Jr., and the answer had been most satisfactory, both earnest and enthusiastic. Mrs. Baker had described her visit to Mrs. Grey and told what a sweet, cultured, refined woman she had found her to be, and how carefully brought up and guarded Letty had been.
“Unless these three years with a traveling circus since her mother’s death have spoiled her, I am sure you could find no more ladylike child than Letty,” she had written. “Certainly she has sufficient birth and breeding to overcome any little bad habits she may have acquired, and in the proper surroundings I am sure she will grow into a charming, refined gentlewoman. Moreover, she may prove to have an inestimable gift. Her mother told me that she herself sang quite well when she was a younger woman, and that she had a strong conviction that Letty had inherited her voice.”
Mrs. Hartwell-Jones sat thinking over this letter and all the little incidents of the child’s past life that Letty had told her from time to time, and she breathed a little prayer of thanksgiving that a precious soul had been entrusted to her care.
“But I thought you didn’t like the circus,” exclaimed Anna at last, when she could laugh no more.
“I didn’t,” answered Letty positively, becoming grave all at once. “I didn’t like it at all!” She was silent for a moment and then said soberly: “Anna, did you ever get into a deep, dark wood with lots of low, thorny bushes and vines among the trees that caught your feet and tangled them and pricked you when you tried to walk through? And then, all at once you came out into the bright, bright sunshine? Then, if you looked back at the wood, while you were safe outside in the warm sunshine, it did not look so dreadful, but you found that it had some rather bright spots in it here and there. Well, that is how I feel about the circus.”
“Oh!” said Anna wonderingly.
“Oh, oh, it is so nice to be out in the sunshine again!” sighed Letty clasping her hands and looking across at Mrs. Hartwell-Jones with tears in her eyes. “So nice!”
Mrs. Hartwell-Jones opened her arms without a word, and Letty ran to them with a glad little cry. Anna stared at the pair in amazement, quite unable to account for this display of emotion. Then, with a sudden instinct that she was not wanted for the moment she rose, gathered the teacups softly together on the tray and tiptoed out of the room.
It was some time before Mrs. Hartwell-Jones and Letty were again interrupted. This time it was the sound of a horse’s hoofs in the road below and then Grandfather Baker’s voice calling “Whoa!”