"It was a year or more after my little Charlie wor tuk away," said Mrs. Moseley. "My heart wor still sore and strange. I guessed as I'd never have another baby, and I wor so bad I could not bear to look at children. As I wor walking over Blackfriars Bridge late one evening I heard a girl crying. I knew by her cry as she was a very young girl, nearly a child; and, God forgive me! for a moment I thought as I'd hurry on, and not notice her, for I did dread seeing children. However, her cry was very bitter, and what do you think it was?
"'Oh, Mammie, Mammie, Mammie!'
"I couldn't stand that; it went through me as clean as a knife. I ran up to her and said: 'What's yer trouble, honey?'
"She turned at once and threw her arms round me, and clung to me, nearly in convulsions with weeping.
"'Oh! take me to my mother,' she sobbed. 'I want my mother.'
"'Yes, deary, tell me where she lives,' I said.
"But the bonnie dear could only shake her head and say she did not know; and she seemed so exhausted and spent that I just brought her home and made her up a bed in your little closet without more ado. She seemed quite comforted that I should take to her, and left off crying for her mother. I asked her the next day a lot of questions, but to everything she said she did not know. She did not know where her mother lived now. She would rather not see her mother, now she was not so lonely. She would rather not tell her real name. I might call her Susie. She had been in France, but she did not like it, and she had got back to England. She had wandered back, and she was very desolate, and she had wanted her mother dreadfully, but not now. Her mother had been bad to her, and she did not wish for her now that I was so good. To hear her talk you'd think as she was hard, but at night John and I 'ud hear her sobbing often and often in her little bed, and naming of her mammie. Never did I come across a more willful bit of flesh and blood. But she had that about her as jest took everyone by storm. My husband and I couldn't make enough on her, and we both jest made her welcome to be a child of our own. She was nothing really but a child, a big, fair English child. She said as she wor twelve years old. She was lovely, fair as a lily, and with long, yellow hair."
"Fair, and with yellow hair?" said Cecile, suddenly springing to her feet. "Yes, and with little teeth like pearls, and eyes as blue as the sky."
"Why, Cecile, did you know her?" said Mrs. Moseley. "Yes, yes, that's jest her. I never did see bluer eyes."
"And was her name Lovedy—Lovedy Joy?" asked Cecile.