“So she would,” he said, contentedly. “She would have stayed where she was put till the time came for the sailor to leave England; then she would have begged to be taken with him.”
“No, she would not; she would have gone to London.”
Captain Fordyce brought his hand down energetically on the table. “Nina, I would give a hundred pounds to have something startle you into saying, ‘I love you.’”
She made a hasty effort to change the subject.
“Tell me again how you happened to know papa and mama.”
“I was sent to them once to recuperate after having fever in a hospital,” he said, indulgently. “They lived on a farm in New York State then, and took boarders. Just after you were sent to them they moved to New Hampshire.”
“And that enabled them to keep up the fiction of being my parents,” said the girl, thoughtfully. “I want to go right back and see them. The others are only dream parents. Yet, I should like, oh, how I should like, to have one glimpse of my real, my very own mother. It seems to me that she is standing by me every night when I go to sleep. I never, never thought of this explanation of myself and my affairs.”
Captain Fordyce threw her a pitying glance.
“How you must have laughed when I suggested that I was an heiress,” said the girl, vehemently, “how you must have laughed! Didn’t you now?”
“I did do some snickering,” he admitted, reluctantly.