"Only seventeen her next birthday."
"I should have taken her for quite eighteen."
"Then you would have made a mistake."
"Is her mother dead?"
"I don't know. I never heard of her after she ran away and left her baby on my hands."
"Eighteen years ago?"
"No; not quite seventeen, I told you, sir."
"And you do not really remember Mrs. Clarke, whom you nursed at Brookline eighteen years ago? Come, it ought to be fresh in your memory. Do you not recall the distressing facts in the case? The infant was stolen from my wife's breast, and she was dying of the shock when a spurious daughter was imposed on her, and she recovered. You, Mrs. Jenks, were sent to the foundling asylum for the child, and laid it on Mrs. Clarke's breast, restoring her to hope again. You cannot have forgotten!"
Granny Jenks looked at him angrily in the moonlight.
"You must be crazy! I don't know you, and I don't care anything about your family history! Go away!" she exclaimed fiercely.