“You were talking about something that was dark-blue and light-blue and gold,” said Miss Tredgold.
Pauline gave a weak smile.
Miss Tredgold took the little girl’s hands and put them inside the bedclothes.
“I am going to get you a cup of tea,” she said.
Miss Tredgold made the tea herself; and when she brought it, and pushed back Pauline’s tangled hair, she observed a narrow gold chain round her neck.
“Where did she get it?” thought the good lady. “Mysteries get worse. I know all about her little ornaments. She has been talking in a most unintelligible way. And where did she get that chain?”
Miss Tredgold’s discoveries of that morning were not yet at an end; for by-and-by, when the servant brought in Pauline’s dress which she had been drying by the kitchen fire, she held something in her hand.
“I found this in the young lady’s pocket,” she said. “I am afraid it is injured a good bit, but if you have it well rubbed up it may get all right again.”
Miss Tredgold saw in the palm of the girl’s hand her own much-valued and long-lost thimble. She gave a quick start, then controlled herself.