ng!--she does not know yet when she can come,
and I must be good and patient. Oh, Mrs. Lindsay! I am so hungry to
see my mother! When I look at her picture, I feel as if I would be
willing to die if I could only kiss her, and hear her say once more,
"My baby! My darling!" Last night I dreamed she took me in her arms
and hugged me tight, and looked at me as she used to do when she came
to the convent, and said, "Papa's own baby! Papa's poor stray lamb!"
Mrs. Lindsay, when I waked I had the pillow in my arms, and was
kissing it.' Now, Douglass, it is a great mystery how a mother could
voluntarily separate herself from such a child as Regina. I asked her
to show me the picture, and she cried a good deal, and said: 'I have
often wished to show it to you, but she says I must let no one see
it. Oh! she is so beautiful! Lovelier than the Madonnas in the
Chapels; only she always has tears in her eyes. I never saw her when
she did not weep. Mrs. Lindsay, help me to be good, teach me to be
smart in everything, that I may be some comfort to my mother.' The
saddest feature in the whole affair is, that Regina begins to suspect
there is some discreditable mystery about her mother and herself; but
Peyton says it is marvellous how delicately she treats the subject.
She came home one day from Sunday school and told him that Mrs.
Prudence asked her in the presence, of her class how her mother could
afford to dress her in such costly clothes; and whether she had ever
seen her father? Peyton wished to know what reply she made, and she
said her answer was: 'Mrs. Potter, if I were you and you were Regina
Orme, I think I would have my tongue cut out, before it should ask
you such questions.' Then Peyton told me she looked at him as if she
were reading his secret soul, and added; 'It is hard not to
understand everything, but I will be patient, for mother writes that
some day I shall know all; and no matter what people say--no matter
how strange things may seem--I will believe in my mother, as I
believe in God!' Most girls of her age would be curious to discover
what is concealed from her, but although your uncle thinks she is
uncertain whether her father be living or dead, she carefully shuns
all reference to the subject. There is the doorbell! Hannah will let
somebody in before I can fly down and tell her to excuse me. How
stupid of people not to know that my Bishop has come! Oh dear! it is
Mrs. Cartney, and she has come for the aprons I promi