“I am sorry,” he wrote, “you had so little confidence in me that you would not write me of your difficulties! I was inexpressibly shocked to learn that your mother suffered want. I supposed her family would look out for you both—she had two brothers living the last I knew. At the time of your father’s death I was extremely hard up myself and thought they were better able to care for her than I was.”
“They were both killed during the war,” Alice stopped reading the letter to explain.
“I am sending you money for clothes and railroad fare, and I trust you will let the past be bygones and come at once to make your home with us. You shall go to school till you are thirty if you want to. Tell Chicken Little Katy was right. I am stuck up—too stuck up to want my only niece to suffer. Tell her, too, I owe her a debt of gratitude for her frank letter that I shall try to pay at some future time.”
“But Chicken Little Jane, how did you know where to send the letter, and what made you think of writing to Mr. Fletcher in the first place?” demanded Mrs. Morton, puzzled.
“Why Dick Harding said——” Chicken Little got no further.
“Dick Harding!” interrupted Dr. Morton. “Oh, I see,” and throwing back his head, he laughed uproariously.
