“My Papa?” He paused, his hand among the strips of newspaper.  “My Papa never saw my Grandma Spragg.  He never went to America.”

“Never went to America?  Your Pa never—?  Why, land alive!” Mrs. Heeny gasped, a blush empurpling her large warm face.  “Why, Paul Marvell, don’t you remember your own father, you that bear his name?” she exclaimed.

The boy blushed also, conscious that it must have been wrong to forget, and yet not seeing how he was to blame.

“That one died a long long time ago, didn’t he?  I was thinking of my French father,” he explained.

“Oh, mercy,” ejaculated Mrs. Heeny; and as if to cut the conversation short she stooped over, creaking like a ship, and thrust her plump strong hand into the bag.

“Here, now, just you look at these clippings—­I guess you’ll find a lot in them about your Ma.—­Where do they come from?  Why, out of the papers, of course,” she added, in response to Paul’s enquiry.  “You’d oughter start a scrap-book yourself—­you’re plenty old enough.  You could make a beauty just about your Ma, with her picture pasted in the front—­and another about Mr. Moffatt and his collections.  There’s one I cut out the other day that says he’s the greatest collector in America.”

Paul listened, fascinated.  He had the feeling that Mrs. Heeny’s clippings, aside from their great intrinsic interest, might furnish him the clue to many things he didn’t understand, and that nobody had ever had time to explain to him.  His mother’s marriages, for instance:  he was sure there was a great deal to find out about them.  But she always said:  “I’ll tell you all about it when I come back”—­and when she came back it was invariably to rush off somewhere else.  So he had remained without a key to her transitions, and had had to take for granted numberless things that seemed to have no parallel in the experience of the other boys he knew.

“Here—­here it is,” said Mrs. Heeny, adjusting the big tortoiseshell spectacles she had taken to wearing, and reading out in a slow chant that seemed to Paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy.

“’It is reported in London that the price paid by Mr. Elmer Moffatt for the celebrated Grey Boy is the largest sum ever given for a Vandyck.  Since Mr. Moffatt began to buy extensively it is estimated in art circles that values have gone up at least seventy-five per cent.’”

But the price of the Grey Boy did not interest Paul, and he said a little impatiently:  “I’d rather hear about my mother.”

“To be sure you would!  You wait now.”  Mrs. Heeny made another dive, and again began to spread her clippings on her lap like cards on a big black table.

“Here’s one about her last portrait—­no, here’s a better one about her pearl necklace, the one Mr. Moffatt gave her last Christmas.  ’The necklace, which was formerly the property of an Austrian Archduchess, is composed of five hundred perfectly matched pearls that took thirty years to collect.  It is estimated among dealers in precious stones that since Mr. Moffatt began to buy the price of pearls has gone up over fifty per cent.’”