"I'm glad your aunt thinks that," she said. "I should hate to talk in the way some of the girls at Miss Brent's did. They used to laugh at me and call me stuck up, but I didn't want to be like them. I hate rough girls. I dream about my mother sometimes, and I know she would be sorry to have me grow up rough and coarse."
"It seems so strange that you can't even remember your mother," said Marjorie, reflectively. "I can't imagine that anything could possibly happen to me that would make me forget Mother."
A shadow crept into Undine's face, and the troubled, frightened look came back into her eyes.
"I don't know," she said, wearily; "I don't know anything. Oh, Marjorie, it frightens me so sometimes."
There was a quiver in the girl's voice, and kind-hearted Marjorie laid a protecting hand on hers.
"Never mind," she said, soothingly; "don't think any more about it than you can help. Perhaps it will all come back some time; Father thinks it will. He thinks the stone, or whatever it was, that fell on you, must have given your brain a terrible shock. He says he heard of a man once who was very badly hurt in a railroad accident, and couldn't remember anything for a long time. His family thought he must be dead, but suddenly his memory all came back to him, and he went home, and gave them a great surprise. Perhaps it will be like that with you some day."
"Miss Brent thinks all my people must have been killed in the earthquake," said Undine, with a sigh. "That might be the reason why nobody ever came to look for me. They say more people were killed than any one knew about. If I could only remember the very least thing that happened before, but I can't; it's just as if I came alive for the first time that day in the hospital. Oh, here comes your aunt; I'll go and help her with her chair." And dropping her towel on the floor of the porch, Undine darted into the house, whence she returned in a moment, carefully guiding Miss Graham's wheeled chair over the door-sill.
"Thank you, dear," Miss Graham said, kindly. "You are a very helpful little girl, but when you are as accustomed to me and my chair as Marjorie is, you will realize that I can manage very well. I heard your voices, and thought I would come out here for a little while; it's so much cooler than in the house."
"Won't you let me get your sewing, or your book, or something?" inquired Undine, hovering solicitously over the invalid.
"No, thank you. I have been sewing all the afternoon; helping Mrs. Graham with the new parlor curtains, and I'm going to be lazy for a little while. I am afraid you dropped your own sewing, in your anxiety to help me."