"Oh, she knows it all right!" exclaimed Mollie. "I took good care that she should! She's a regular—cat. No other word expresses what I mean, and I don't care if it isn't a nice thing to say about a girl. She deserves it."
Amy flushed and looked troubled.
"Don't let's talk about it," suggested Betty quickly, catching an appealing glance from her little chum. "We all know there isn't the least foundation for it, any more than there was at first, and that's an old story."
"Oh, yes, there is a little more basis for it," said Amy in a low voice, and with a hasty look around.
"There is?" cried Betty, before she thought. "Oh, I didn't mean that!" she added quickly. "Don't tell us—unless it will make you feel better, Amy."
"It will, I think. I have been going to ever since the day Alice hurt me so, but I couldn't seem to come to it. But of late there has been a change in—in Mr. and Mrs. Stonington."
"Don't you call them Uncle and Aunt any more?" asked Grace in a low voice.
"I do to their faces—yes, but I don't think of them that way," and Amy's voice faltered.
"Why?" Betty wanted to know.
"Because, by the merest accident, I found the other day, a piece of paper in—in Mr. Stonington's desk. I had read it before I realized it and it intimated that a mistake had been made in assuming that the envelope pinned on my dress, when I was rescued from the flood, was really intended to be on me. In that case Mr. and Mrs. Stonington would be no relation to me."