"I have had constantly in my mind that strange child who played and danced in your garden. She has haunted me. You told me her name was Nonie Hopworth. I have looked up records and have learned that the young student who, fifteen years ago, gave such promise of dramatic ability, was Ilona Carr and that she married an Eric Hopworth. This Nonie is without doubt her child.
"Will you ask the child's guardians if they will allow her to come to my school at Tarrytown for a few years? There she will have the best schooling and dramatic training that my teachers can give and her talent will have an opportunity for development and growth. When she is older she shall choose for herself whether or not she will follow the calling——"
"The fairy godmother has come," declared Nancy, later, bursting in upon the Hopworth family with her strange news. She had to read and re-read the letter so that they could understand and Eric Hopworth had to hear all about the afternoon at Happy House when the great Theodore Hoffman had called.
At first he had decidedly opposed the plan. Liz had snorted in disapproval. Nonie had stared at first one, then another, with round, bewildered eyes.
"You ought not to throw away such a chance. It's a wonderful school—I've visited there. Nonie will have splendid training——"
"I know all about it," Eric Hopworth had broken in, and Nancy suddenly remembered what the master had told her.
"Tell me about Nonie's mother," she begged.
There was not much to tell—she had come into Eric Hopworth's life and gone out again, in a few years.
"I always had a feelin' I'd cheated her of a lot," Eric Hopworth said humbly, turning in his hand the photograph he had brought out from old Dan'l's bureau to show Nancy.
It was a cheap little photograph, taken a few months after they had been married. But the pretty face that smiled out of it was a happy face. Nancy, as she studied it closely, wondered if it had ever been shadowed by a regret for the dreams she had sacrificed by her marriage.