On their return home, Mr. Bright called to them over the garden fence.  “I’ve just had a letter from your neighbor, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said he.  “She wants to know whether we can accommodate her, and her father, and her son with lodgings this summer.  I’m mighty glad we can say we’ve let all our rooms; for that old Mr. Bell treats mechanics as if he thought they all had the small-pox, and he was afraid o’ catching it.  So different from you, Mr. Blumenthal, and Mr. King!  You ain’t afraid to take hold of a rough hand without a glove on.  How is Mrs. King?  Hope she’s coming to-morrow.  If the thrushes and bobolinks could sing human music, and put human feeling into it, her voice would beat ’em all.  How romantic that you should come here to Joe Bright’s to find your sister, that you thought was dead.”

When they had courteously answered his inquiries, he repeated a wish he had often expressed, that somebody would write a story about it.  If he had been aware of all their antecedents, he would perhaps have written one himself; but he only knew that the handsome sisters were orphans, separated in youth, and led by a singular combination of circumstances to suppose each other dead.

CHAPTER XXIX.

When the sisters were alone together, the next day after dinner, Flora said, “Rosa, dear, does it pain you very much to hear about Mr. Fitzgerald?”

“No; that wound has healed,” she replied.  “It is merely a sad memory now.”

“Mrs. Bright was nursery governess in his family before her marriage,” rejoined Flora.  “I suppose you have heard that he disappeared mysteriously.  I think she may know something about it, and I have been intending to ask her; but your sudden appearance, and the quantity of things we have had to say to each other, have driven it out of my head.  Do you object to my asking her to come in and tell us something about her experiences?”

“I should be unwilling to have her know we were ever acquainted with Mr. Fitzgerald,” responded Mrs. King.

“So should I,” said Flora.  “It will be a sufficient reason for my curiosity that Mrs. Fitzgerald is our acquaintance and neighbor.”

And she went out to ask her hostess to come and sit with them.  After some general conversation, Flora said:  “You know Mrs. Fitzgerald is our neighbor in Boston.  I have some curiosity to know what were your experiences in her family.”

“Mrs. Fitzgerald was always very polite to me,” replied Mrs. Bright; “and personally I had no occasion to find fault with Mr. Fitzgerald, though I think the Yankee schoolma’am was rather a bore to him.  The South is a beautiful part of the country.  I used to think the sea-island, where they spent most of the summer, was as beautiful as Paradise before the fall; but I never felt at home there.  I didn’t like the state of things.  It’s my theory that everybody ought to help in doing the work of the world.  There’s