For a moment, there was silence in the room. Then Mrs. Burton was the first to speak.
“Excuse us, dear sir,” she said calmly, “if we are somewhat startled at what you have said. And yet we are not altogether surprised. You will not think that strange?”
“No, ma’am,” said “Cobbler” Horn, in a musing tone, “not altogether strange, perhaps. But, shall I explain a little further? It was only last evening that I was led to entertain the thought that Miss Owen might actually prove to be my lost child. She was telling me, as she had done several times before, all about how you found her, and of your goodness to her; and she spoke last night, for the first time, of the one shoe she was wearing when you found her in the road. Now you may judge how I was startled, on hearing this, when I tell you that, just after Marian was lost, we picked up one of her shoes in a field, over which she must have wandered away. So, this morning, without telling her my reason, I asked her to let me see the little shoe she had worn so long ago. She at once fetched it; and here it is, and with it the one we found in the field.”
So saying, he drew, from underneath the bed-clothes, the two little shoes; and placed them side by side upon the counterpane.
Mr. and Mrs. Burton rose and approached the bed.
“Yes,” said Mr. Burton, “that is undoubtedly Miss Owen’s little shoe.”
“And this,” said Mrs. Burton, “is unquestionably its fellow,” and, taking up the shoes, she held them towards her husband.
“You are certainly right, my dear.”
Then there was silence for a brief space, while these two simple-hearted people bent, with deep emotion, over the little baby shoes which seemed to prove so much.
Mrs. Burton was the first to speak.