replied, showing more self-control than
Polly had ever seen her display before.

"Very many years ago I had a baby named Phyllis. Betty tells me that
you too saw her picture in the old trunk. Well, Dick was a little boy
of about seven, and by some dreadful accident found a loaded pistol in
his father's desk and came running into the big back room with it,
which in those days was the baby's nursery. You can imagine what
happened without my telling you. Dick was a child, and yet the horror
of it has altered his entire nature and life. He has always been
serious and over-conscientious, always anxious to devote his life to
the service of other people as a reparation for a tragedy which was
never in the least his fault. It was therefore as much for Dick's sake
as for mine that Mr. Ashton persuaded us to adopt a baby in Phyllis'
place. So we drove out to the asylum together one day, with our minds
not made up and there--there we found our adored Betty. Herr Crippen
had just left his two children to be cared for, and Betty was only a
baby. But she was the most exquisite little thing you can imagine, the
same lovely auburn hair and big serious gray eyes. Dick adored her
from the moment that she put her arms about his neck and would not let
go when the time came for us to return home. We have always loved her
since, Polly, as well as if she had been our own baby--better I almost
think. You know what she is, so there is little use for me to say
it--'Our Princess', dear. I have always loved your name and the other
girls' for her."

"But Herr Crippen and Esther--they are so plain, and except for their
gifts, why, compared to Betty they seem so--so ordinary," Polly
protested.

"But you must remember that there was a mother, too, and that Herr
Crippen has said she was an American and very lovely. I believe her
family would have nothing more to do with her because she married a
German musician. And then, you see, child, Betty has had many
advantages that Esther has not had. It was because Dick and I began
slowly to realize that perhaps we had been cruel to Esther in depriving
her of her little sister that we finally asked her to come here and
live as a kind of companion to Betty. It was a long-delayed kindness
and yet Esther has very nobly repaid us; for it seems that when Herr
Crippen returned and claimed Esther as his daughter, Esther learned
then of Betty's relation to them and it was she who insisted that her