"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 been
brought up by an aunt, she was very poor and very ambitious.

"Wants a moosical eddication," finished up Crooked Jack, "and,