"Yes," nodded Constance. "Haven't you seen father since I left? Didn't he tell you?"
"Only once. I—he—I didn't let him know about us. It was right after you went away. He said you had taken Charlie with you. I met him in the street and stopped only a minute. I had come from your house that day but there was no one at home. I couldn't bear to let things go on as they had.
"Now," declared Marjorie, drawing a long breath, "begin at the beginning and tell me every single thing."
"I will," assured Constance, emphatically. "Let me see. It began the day after Christmas. A letter came from New York in the morning mail addressed to father. I gave it to him, and after he read it he sat so still and looked so white that I thought he was going to faint. Then he made me come and sit down beside him and told me that the letter was from my mother's sister in New York and that she was rich and wanted me to come and live with her.
"I said that I would never desert my own father no matter how poor he was, and then he told me that he was only my foster father, just as he was Charlie's. That my own father had been his best friend when they were boys. Later on, my father became a worthless, drunken wretch and my mother had to do sewing to take care of herself and me. My mother's family never forgave her for marrying my father and would not help her. She was not strong and could not stand it to be so poor and work so hard. She died when I was a year old, and just a month afterward my father died with pneumonia. No one wanted me, so I was put in an orphan asylum, but Father Stevens, who had been trying to find my father, heard where I was and took me to live with him. He wrote to my aunt first, but she said she didn't want me. That is the first part of my story."
"It sounds like a story in a book," said Marjorie, softly. "Go on, Connie."
"This letter that father received was from my aunt," continued Constance. "She had been trying to find us for more than two years. Finally, she saw father's name signed to an article in the musical magazine, so she wrote a letter and asked the publishers to forward it. She said in the letter that she was now an old woman who had found that blood was thicker than water, and that she wanted her sister's daughter, who must now be a young woman, to come and live with her. With the letter came a jeweler's box, and in the box was the butterfly pin. She sent it to me as a Christmas gift.
"I cried and said I would not go, but father said it was the opportunity of my life time and that I must. He said that he had no legal right to me and that he loved me too dearly to stand in my way. It almost broke my heart. How I hated that butterfly and my aunt, too. When you came to see me that unlucky day I was feeling the worst. That very night I wrote my aunt a long letter. I told her just how I felt, how much I loved father and Charlie and poor old Uncle John and that I could never, never give them up. Father didn't know I wrote the letter. He thought I was becoming resigned to going away. I went back to school and wore the pin, as my aunt had asked me to do in a little note enclosed in father's letter.
"Then her letter came and it was so much nicer than the other that I cried out of pure happiness. She asked me to bring Charlie to New York. She knew a famous specialist who she thought might help, if not cure him. She asked me to make her a visit and said she would never wish me to come to live with her except of my own free will.
"We went to New York as you know, and, Marjorie"—Constance made an impressive pause—"Charlie is going to be entirely well in a little while. The specialist operated on his hip and the operation was successful. He will be able to walk before very long. When he knew I was coming home he said, 'Tell Marjorie that I don't need to ask Santa Claus for a new leg next year, because the good, kind man she told me about fixed mine.'"