"No; I don't know."
"Perhaps her lungs are affected, and she has gone to a warmer climate," suggested Mrs. Mordaunt. "She may have gone to Florida, or even to Italy."
"Where is your father?" asked Dan, turning to Althea.
"Father is a bad man," said the child, positively. "He made mamma cry. He went away a good while ago."
"And didn't he come back?"
"He came back once, and then mamma cried again. I think he wanted mamma to give him some money."
Dan and his mother talked over the little girl's revelations, and thought they had obtained a clew to the mystery in which the child's history was involved. Althea's mother might have married a man of bad habits, who wanted to get possession of her fortune, and rendered a separation necessary. Ill health might have required her to leave home and shift the care of the little girl upon strangers. It seemed rather odd that she should have been handed over to utter strangers, but there might have been reasons of which they knew nothing.
"We won't trouble ourselves about it," said Dan. "It's good luck for us, even if it was bad luck for Althea's mother. I like the idea of having a little sister."
Althea's last name was not known to her new protector. When Dan inquired, he was told that she could pass by his name, so Althea Mordaunt she became.
Both Dan and his mother had feared that she might become homesick, but the fear seemed groundless. She was of a happy disposition, and almost immediately began to call Mrs. Mordaunt mother.