"Did you ever have an Uncle Jerry?"
"If I did, he never came near us that I can remember," she candidly replied.
The purple of his face deepened. "That's right, too," he muttered. "But your mother ran away to get married."
"And her folks told her never to let them see her face again," supplemented Gloriana bitterly.
"Was her name Weller at one time? But of course it was. There couldn't be two people on earth look as much alike as she and you unless they were mother and daughter; and besides, she married a Holliday,—Jack Holliday."
Gloriana nodded.
"Then, my girl, I'm your Uncle Jerry, and if you didn't catch your bank robber, you made a pretty good haul anyway. Your mother—she—she's—dead, isn't she? And your father? You're an orphan——"
"She's not any longer!" Tabitha broke in savagely. "We've adopted her and she's my sister."
"Oh! Well, that simplifies matters, too, for I'm a bachelor and have no home to offer, but— Say, I want to talk with you. Where's your adopted father? Not in town now? Well, isn't there some place we can go where we won't be gawked at by all these hoodlums? Bring your black-haired sister,—my jailer. I certainly do admire pluck."
At this broad hint, the curious crowd reluctantly withdrew, and left the trio alone at the pesthouse threshold. Standing there bare-headed with the waning sunlight glinting through the heavy, red locks, Gloriana told what she could remember of the pitiful struggle of her parents, their deaths, and her unhappy lot until the scholarship at Ivy Hall had opened the way to better things.