until such time as he
might reveal it. A speedy answer to this letter was desired, and Neil
closed by signing himself:

"Your very affectionate nephew, Neil McPherson."

He posted the letter himself, and feeling almost sure of a favorable
response, went and bought Bessie a small solitaire ring, such as he
could afford, and sent it with the most loving, hopeful letter he had
yet written to her.

CHAPTER XIV.

MISS MCPHERSON AND THE LETTER.

Nine years had made but little change in Miss Betsey McPherson, either
mentally or physically. As she had been at the Thanksgiving dinner where
we first met her, so she was now, with possibly a little sharper tone in
her voice and a shade more of eccentricity in her nature. As she lived
alone then with her two servants, so she lived alone now, with the same
cook in the kitchen, but not the same housemaid to attend her. Flora had
been married for five or six years to a respectable mechanic, and lived
in a small white house across the common, with three children to care
for--two boys and a girl. This last she had thought to call for her
former mistress to whom she had timidly expressed her intention, asking
if she would be godmother.

"Flo is a fool to saddle her child with a name she hates," Miss
McPherson thought, but she consented to act as sponsor, and wore her
best black silk in honor of the occasion, when Sunday came and she took
her accustomed seat in church.

But her thoughts were evidently not upon the service, for she knelt in
the wrong place, and once said aloud in her abstraction, "Let us pray,"
and there was a twinkle in her round bright eyes, and a grim smile on
her face when she at last arose, and straight and stiff as a
darning-needle walked up the aisle, and took in her arms the little pink
and white baby who was to bear her name. It was a pretty child, and as
she held it for a moment and looked into its clear blue eyes fixed so
questioningly upon her face, there came to her the thought of another
little blue-eyed girl who had come to her on the sands of Aberystwyth,
and the touch of whose hands as they rubbed and patted the folds of her
dress she could feel even now after the lapse of many years. That child
had said to her that Betsey was a horrid name; this child in her arms
would think so, too, and hate it all her life, and when the clergyman,
said, "Name this child," she answered, in a loud, clear voice, which
rang distinctly through the church: