“Surely I do,” she replied, reassured by my manner. “But you, it seems,” she presently added with a winning smile, “have quite forgotten little Mary Kingsford.”
“Mary Kingsford!” I exclaimed almost with a shout. “Why, so it is! But what a transformation a few years have effected!”
“Do you think so? Not pretty Mary Kingsford now then, I suppose?” she added with a light, pleasant laugh.
“You know what I mean, you vain puss you!” I rejoined quite gleefully; for I was overjoyed at meeting with the gentle, well-remembered playmate of my own eldest girl. We were old familiar friends—almost father and daughter—in an instant.
Little Mary Kingsford, I should state, was, when I left Yorkshire, one of the prettiest, most engaging children I had ever seen; and a petted favorite not only with us, but of every other family in the neighborhood. She was the only child of Philip and Mary Kingsford—a humble, worthy, and much-respected couple. The father was gardener to Sir Pyott Dalzell, and her mother eked out his wages to a respectable maintenance by keeping a cheap children’s school. The change which a few years had wrought in the beautiful child was quite sufficient to account for my imperfect recognition of her; but the instant her name was mentioned, I at once recognised the rare comeliness which had charmed us all in her childhood. The soft brown eyes were the same, though now revealing profounder depths, and emitting a more pensive expression; the hair, though deepened in color, was still golden; her complexion, lit up as it now was by a sweet blush, was brilliant as ever; whilst her child-person had become matured and developed into womanly symmetry and grace. The brilliancy of color vanished from her cheek as I glanced meaningly at her mourning dress.
“Yes,” she murmured in a sad quivering voice—“yes, father is gone! It will be six months come next Thursday that he died! Mother is well,” she continued more cheerfully after a pause, “in health, but poorly off; and I—and I,” she added with a faint effort at a smile, “am going to London to seek my fortune!”
“To seek your fortune!”
“Yes: you know my cousin, Sophy Clarke? In one of her letters, she said she often saw you.”
I nodded without speaking. I knew little of Sophia Clarke, except that she was the somewhat gay, coquettish shopwoman of a highly respectable confectioner in the Strand, whom I shall call by the name of Morris.
“I am to be Sophy’s fellow shop-assistant,” continued Mary Kingsford; “not of course at first at such good wages as she gets. So lucky for me, is it not, since I must go to service? And so kind, too, of Sophy to interest herself for me!”