r?' Margaret was surprised.

'No,' Miss More answered. 'She is insane, you know. She went quite
mad soon after the little girl was born. It was very painful for
the Senator. Her delusion was that he was her divorced husband, Mr.
Bamberger, and when the child came into the world she insisted that
it should be called Ida, and that she had no other. Mr. Bamberger's
daughter was Ida, you know. It was very strange. Mrs. Moon was
convinced that she was forced to live her life over again, year by
year, as an expiation for something she had done. The doctors say it
is a hopeless case. I really think it shortened the Senator's life.'

Margaret did not think that the world had any cause to complain of
Mrs. Moon on that account.

'So this child is quite alone in the world,' she said.

'Yes. Her father is dead and her mother is in an asylum.'

'Poor little thing!'

The two young women were leaning back in their chairs, their faces
turned towards each other as they talked, and Ida was still busy with
her crochet.

'Luckily she has a sunny nature,' said Miss More. 'She is interested
in everything she sees and hears.' She laughed a little. 'I always
speak of it as hearing,' she added, 'for it is quite as quick, when
there is light enough. You know that, since you have talked with her.'

'Yes. But in the dark, how do you make her understand?'

'She can generally read what I say by laying her hand on my lips; but
besides that, we have the deaf and dumb alphabet, and she can feel my
fingers as I make the letters.'

'You have been with her a long time, I suppose,' Margaret said.

'Since she was three years old.'

'California is a beautiful country, isn't it?' asked Margaret after a
pause.

She put the question idly, for she was thinking how hard it must be to
teach deaf and dumb children. Miss More's answer surprised her.

'I have never been there.'

'But, surely, Senator Moon lived in San Francisco,' Margaret said.

'Yes. But the child was sent to New England when she was three,
and never went back again. We have been living in the country near
Boston.'

'And the Senator used to pay you a visit now and then, of course, when
he was alive. He must have been immensely pleased by the success of
your teaching.'

Though Margaret felt that she was growing more curious about little
Ida than she often was about any one, it did not occur to her that the
question she now suggested, rather than asked, was an indiscreet one,
a