forget myself as to talk as I did to-day--I, who am usually so silent
with regard to my affairs! Why need I have told them that Archie's wife
was a trollop. I suppose the venom is still rankling in me for the name
she called me, 'Old Sour Krout!'" and Miss Betsey smiled grimly as she
remembered all, the child upon the terrace had said to her that summer
morning three years ago, "She is truthful, at all events," she
continued, "and I like that, and wish I had her here. She would be a
comfort to me, now that I am old, and the house has no young life in it,
except my cats. There's the bedroom at the end of the hall, opening from
my room. She could have that, and I should be so happy fitting it up for
her. I'd trim it with blue, and have hangings at the bed, and--"

Here she stopped, seized with a sudden inspiration, and summoning the
housemaid, Flora, to her, she said:

"Remove the tea things and bring my writing-desk."

Flora obeyed, and her mistress was soon deep in the construction of a
letter to Archibald McPherson, to whom she made the proposition that he
should bring his daughter Betsey to her, or if he did not care to cross
the ocean himself, that he place her under the charge of some reliable
person who was coming to America and who would see her safely to
Allington, or, that failing, she did not know but she would come herself
for the child, so anxious was she to have her.

"I shall not try to conceal from you that I have seen her. You know
that by the result. I did see her on the terrace, and saw your wife,
too, and I liked the child, and want her for my own, to train as I
please and to bring up to some useful occupation, so that, if
necessary, she can earn her own living. There has been too much