n't talk to Bruce
Fearing, or to any one else up here, whenever you felt like it; he was
far too busy. But on the hill at sunset Elliott found her chance.

"I think Aunt Jessica," she remarked, "is the most wonderful woman
I've ever seen."

A glow lit up Bruce's quiet gray eyes. "Mother Jess," he said, "is a
miracle."

"She is so terrifically busy, and yet she never seems to hurry; and
she always has time to talk to you and she never acts tired."

"She is, though."

"I suppose she must be, sometimes. I like that name for her, 'Mother
Jess.' Your--aunt, is she?"

"Oh, no," said Bruce, simply. "I've no Cameron or Fordyce blood in me,
or any other pedigreed variety. My corpuscles are unregistered. She
and Father Bob took Pete and me in when I was a baby and Pete was a
mere toddler. I was born in the hotel down in the town there,--Am I
boring you?"

"No, indeed!" Elliott had the grace to blush at the ease with which
she was carrying on her investigation.

He wondered why she flushed, but went on quietly. "Our own mother died
there in the hotel when I was a week old and we didn't seem to have
any kin. At least, they never showed up. Mother was evidently a widow;
Mother Jess got that from her belongings. She stopped overnight at
Highboro, and I was born there. She hadn't told any one in the hotel
where she was going. Registered from Boston, but nobody could be found
in Boston who knew of her. The authorities were going to send Pete and
me to some kind of a capitalized Home, when Mother Jess stepped in.
She hadn't enough boys, so she said. Bob and Laura and Sid were on
deck. Henry and Tom came along later. Fordyce was the one that died;
he'd just slipped out. Mother Jess was feeling lonely, I guess.
Anyway, she took us two; said she thought we'd be better off on the
farm than in a Home and she needed us--bless her! Do you wonder Pete
and I swear by the Camerons?"

"No," said Elliott. "Indeed I don't." She had what she had been
angling for, in good measure, but she rather wished she hadn't got it,
after all. "Haven't you had any clue in all these years as to who your
people were?"

"Not the slightest. I'm willing to let things rest as they are."

"Yes, of course," thought Elliott, "but--" She let it go at "but."
Oughtn't somebody, as Stannard said, to have warned her? These boys'
people might have been very common persons, not at all like Camerons.
The fact that no relatives appeared proved that, didn't it? Every