Mildred started eagerly. The old burning desire to know who she was, or whence she came, was awakened, and grasping the boy’s hand, she said:
“Maybe you’re my brother, then. Oh, I wish you was! Come down to the brook, where the sun shines; we can see our faces there and know if we look alike.”
She had grasped his arm and was trying to draw him forward, when he dashed all her newly-formed hopes by saying:
“It is my step-mother you resemble; she that was the famous beauty, Mildred Howell.”
“That pretty lady in the frame?” said Mildred, rather sadly. “Widow Simms says I look like her. And was she your mother?”
“She was father’s second wife,” returned the boy, “and I am Lawrence Thornton, of Boston.”
Seeing that the name, “Lawrence Thornton,” did not impress the little girl as he fancied it would, the boy proceeded to give her an outline history of himself and family, which last, he said, was one of the oldest, and richest, and most aristocratic in the city.
“Have you any sisters?” Mildred asked, and Lawrence replied:
“I had a sister once, a good deal older than I am. I don’t remember her much, for when I was five years old,—that’s ten years ago,—she ran off with her music teacher, Mr. Harding, and never came back again; and about a year later, we heard that she was dead, and that there was a girl-baby that died with her——”
“Yes; but what of the beautiful lady, your mother?” chimed in Mildred, far more interested in Mildred Howell than in the baby reported to have died with Lawrence’s sister Helen.