“Cobbler” Horn smiled.
“He was the first to find it out. You must know that he took much kind interest in my little girl; and it was a great grief to him that she was lost. And when your adopted daughter came to us, he was not long in forming conjectures as to who she might be. In a very short time, as a matter of fact, he had quite made up his mind. He tried to tell me about it; but I was too stupid to understand him, and so it was left for me to find out the happy truth by accident. Tell our friends, Tommy, how you came to discover who Miss Owen really was.”
Thus enjoined, Tommy, nothing loath, recounted once more the story of his great discovery. Mr. and Mrs. Burton listened with deep attention, and, having put several questions to Tommy, admitted that what he had said afforded much confirmation to the supposition that Miss Owen was the long-lost Marian.
“I have a thought about the child’s name,” said Mrs. Burton after a brief pause. “It comes to me that what she gave us as her name sounded quite as much like Marian Horn as Mary Ann Owen.”
“Why yes,” said Miss Jemima, “now I think of it, she used to pronounce her name very much as though it had been something like Mary Ann Owen. As well as I can remember, it was ‘Ma—an O—on.’”
“I believe you are right, Jemima,” said her brother.
“It must be admitted,” interposed Mr. Burton quickly, “that Mary Ann Owen was a very reasonable interpretation of that combination of sounds.”
“Undoubtedly it was,” assented “Cobbler” Horn.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Burton, “what you say, Miss Horn, is very much like the way in which the child pronounced her name. And there’s another thing which may serve as a further mark. She had on, beneath the old shawl, a little chemise, on which were worked, in red, the letters ‘M.H.’”
“I know it!” cried Miss Jemima. “I always marked her clothes like that. You used to laugh at me, Thomas; but what do you say now?”