‘How small the world is!’ Margaret said in a low voice as she looked at the grey waves.

She wondered whether little Ida had ever heard of her half-sister, and what Miss More knew about it all.

‘How old is Mrs. Moon?’ she asked.

’I fancy she must be forty, or near that.  I know that she was nearly thirty years younger than the Senator, but I never saw her.’

‘You never saw her?’ 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.’