save one; the face which the Old Lady remembered had
been weak, with all its charm; but this girl's face possessed a fine,
dominant strength compact of sweetness and womanliness. As she passed by
the Old Lady's hiding place she laughed at something one of the children
said; and oh, but the Old Lady knew that laughter well. She had heard it
before under that very beech tree.

She watched them until they disappeared over the wooded hill beyond the
bridge; and then she went back home as if she walked in a dream. Crooked
Jack was delving vigorously in the garden; ordinarily the Old Lady
did not talk much with Crooked Jack, for she disliked his weakness for
gossip; but now she went into the garden, a stately old figure in her
purple, gold-spotted silk, with the sunshine gleaming on her white hair.

Crooked Jack had seen her go out and had remarked to himself that the
Old Lady was losing ground; she was pale and peaked-looking. He now
concluded that he had been mistaken. The Old Lady's cheeks were pink and
her eyes shining. Somewhere in her walk she had shed ten years at least.
Crooked Jack leaned on his spade and decided that there weren't many
finer looking women anywhere than Old Lady Lloyd. Pity she was such an
old miser!

"Mr. Spencer," said the Old Lady graciously--she always spoke very
graciously to her inferiors when she talked to them at all--"can you
tell me the name of the new music teacher who is boarding at Mr. William
Spencer's?"

"Sylvia Gray," said Crooked Jack.

The Old Lady's heart gave another great bound. But she had known it--she
had known that girl with Leslie Gray's hair and eyes and laugh must be
Leslie Gray's daughter.

Crooked Jack spat on his hand and resumed his work, but his tongue went
faster than his spade, and the Old Lady listened greedily. For the first
time she enjoyed and blessed Crooked Jack's garrulity and gossip. Every
word he uttered was as an apple of gold in a picture of silver to her.

He had been working at William Spencer's the day the new music teacher
had come, and what Crooked Jack couldn't find out about any person in
one whole day--at least as far as outward life went--was hardly worth
finding out. Next to discovering things did he love telling them, and it
would be hard to say which enjoyed that ensuing half-hour more--Crooked
Jack or the Old Lady.

Crooked Jack's account, boiled down, amounted to this; both Miss Gray's
parents had died when she was a baby, she had b