have seen them before."

"Did your mother never have any other children, Betty?" Mollie
inquired, and the other girl shook her head.

Polly had come over now and was standing near them by the edge of the
trunk and looking down inside it.

Of course what Betty was doing must seem to her perfectly right or else
she would never have thought of doing it; yet Polly could not help
feeling a certain distaste for the whole proceeding. Old possessions
were always kind of uncanny and uncomfortable to her temperament; they
held too poignant a suggestion of death, of the passing of time and of
almost forgotten memories.

Betty and Mollie had a differently romantic point of view. And to both
of them, being essentially feminine, the delicate, exquisite baby
apparel made a strongly sentimental appeal.

Suddenly, with a little cry of surprise and amusement, Betty picked up
a small frock which must have been made for a child of about a year
old, that was curiously different from the others. While they had been
of sheer lawns and expensive laces, this was a perfectly
straight-up-and-down garment of coarse check gingham of the cheapest
kind and attached to it were a pair of rough little shoes.

"I wonder how in the world these ever got in here or why mother has
preserved them so carefully. She has a perfect horror of cheap
things," Betty began in a half-puzzled and half-humorous fashion,
holding the poor little baby dress up to the light and giving it a
shake.

Stooping, Mollie picked up something that must have fallen from one of
the shoes. It was an old tintype picture of a comparatively young man
with a baby in his arms and a little girl pressing close up against his
knee.

Mollie was looking at it with a slightly bewildered expression when
Polly came up and glanced over her shoulder. And instantly Polly's
face grew white; however, it was a trick of hers when anything
surprised or annoyed her. And at the moment she had a strong impulse
to take the picture from Mollie's hands and tear it into a hundred
pieces before Betty Ashton should have a chance to see it.

Notwithstanding, Betty had already joined them and was apparently as
much perplexed as Mollie. She took the photograph nearer to the window.

"I declare this looks like Esther when she was a little girl and
Professor Crippen. I believe he did tell me there was another child
that somebody had adopted and who did not know he was her father. I
suppose Esther m