"Oh, Mrs. Hosmer, is it anybody from home?" asked Esther, longingly.
"Here, Marie, read her the name on this card, and see if she says she is at home to visitors," replied Mrs. Hosmer, playfully.
Marie took the card, and a moment after dropped it as though it had been red-hot.
This was what met her eyes:
"Mrs. James Archington,
"44 North Avenue."
"Grandma—it's grandma," cried Esther, delightedly.
At the December meeting of the Browning Circle the girls discussed Marie Smythe once more.
"It was the queerest thing," reported Anna Fergus, who knew the whole story. "You see this Mrs. Archington is Esther's grandmother, and Marie never knew it. She said so little to the poor girl that Esther had never chanced to tell her. Talk about retributive justice, this is the most direct piece of retribution I ever heard of. And the queerest part of it is that Esther's grandmother is the real North Avenue Archingtons, while Marie's Cape May friends are a newly-rich family, who happen to live on the same street with the others, but are not related to them at all."
"But, girls," said Zoe Binnix, "it's been a splendid thing for Marie, even if it has been humiliating. I never saw a more completely changed girl. She's quite dropped her fine-lady airs and subsided into a sensible being. She's so good now that Esther doesn't want to change her room, though Mrs. Hosmer told her she might."
The girls were right in their opinion of Marie's change of character. She grew up to be a sensible woman, singularly devoid of pretense or affectation.