ied once, her mother wrote, and had said she
thanked God the baby had died and that was all she ever said of it.

"I brought the baby home, and for nearly three years she lived with my
own, and of course Mrs. Melrose paid me for it. And then one day Louison
Courtot came to see me--I'd known her, of course--Mr. Theodore's wife,
that had been Miss Annie's maid. She had a letter from Mrs. Melrose, and
she took Leslie away, and gave her to her grandmother--just according to
plan. Well, I didn't like it--though it gave the child her rights, but
it didn't seem honest. I had no call to interfere, and a few months
later Mrs. Melrose gave me the double house in Brooklyn, that you'll
well remember, Norma--and your own father made out the deed of gift, Mr.
Chris----!

"And then, perhaps a year later, Louison came to call on me again, and
with her was a little girl--four years old, and I looked at her, and
looked at Louison, and I said, 'My God--that's a Melrose!' She said,
yes, it was Theodore's child."

"Norma!" Chris said.

"Norma--and I remember her as if it was yesterday! With a blue velvet
coat on her, and a white collar, and the way she dragged off her little
mittens to go over and play with Rose and Wolf--and the little coaxing
air she had! So then Louison told me the story, how she had never told
Mrs. Melrose that Theodore really had a daughter, because she hated her
so! But she was going to be married again, and go to Canada, and she
wanted me to keep the baby until she could send for her. I said I would
see how it went, but I could see then that there never was in the
world----" Mrs. Sheridan interrupted herself, coughed, and glanced at
the girl. "Well, we liked Norma right then and there!" she finished, a
little tamely.

"Oh, Aunt Kate!" Norma said, smiling through tears, her hand tight upon
the older woman's, "you never will praise me!"

"So Norma," the story went on, "had her supper that night between my two
children, and for fourteen years she never knew that she wasn't our own.
And perhaps she never would have known if Louison hadn't written me that
she was in a hospital--she was to have an operation, and she was willing
at last to make peace with her husband's family. In the same letter was
her husband's note that she was gone, so I had to use my own judgment
then. And when I heard Norma talk of the rich girls she saw in the
bookstore, Mr. Chris, and knew how she loved what money could do for
her, it seemed