Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it.  On the dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it when she took out her bonnet.  On the mantle lay the other glove she had forgotten in her flight.  The two lower drawers of the bureau were half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay her shawl pin and a soiled cuff.  What other recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door.  Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-healed scar.  She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed.  Then she turned away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung her precious dresses.  These she inspected nervously, and missing suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment, thought she should have fainted.  But discovering it the next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time sincerely thrilled her.  Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing, before the mirror.  And then suddenly she became aware of a child’s voice close beside her, and she stopped.  And then the child’s voice repeated, “Is it Mamma?”

Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about.  Standing in the doorway was a little girl of six or seven.  Her dress had been originally fine, but was torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled seriocomically about her forehead.  For all this, she was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much to themselves.  She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself—­a doll with a cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal.  A long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders and swept the floor.

The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick’s delight.  Perhaps she had but a small sense of humor.  Certainly, when the child, still standing in the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it isn’t,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.

The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech: 

“Dow ’way then! why don’t you dow away?”

But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl.  Suddenly she whipped it off the child’s shoulders, and said angrily: