And after breakfast how the hours dragged!

Nancy was anxious to be starting for home, yet she could do nothing to hasten the time when she could go.  Sue was busy with the ordinary work of the morning, and Mrs. Ferris had told her to tell Nancy that she would talk with her after dinner.  That she felt too ill to see her until afternoon.

“’Tain’t no use ter fret, Nancy,” said Sue, “she ain’t good fer much till after dinner, but I guess shell talk with ye then fast ’nough.”

“But I’m wild to get back to the cottage,” wailed Nancy.

“Ye couldn’t git there ter-day, fer this is Sunday, and we don’t hev but two trains that stop here Sundays.  One leaves here at half-past seven in the morning, an’ the other stops here at half-past nine at night, but that one goes ter the city, an’ that would be going right away from Merrivale.”

Nancy made no reply, but turned to look from the window.

“To-morrow will be Monday, and I must get back to school,” she thought.

It was late in the afternoon when Mrs. Ferris called Nancy to listen to what she had to say.

“I kin talk ter ye now,” she said, “an’ first I’ll ask ye ef ye remember the old house in Merrivale where ye used ter live before Mis’ Dainty give ye a home?”

“I guess I do,” said Nancy.

“Wal, ‘twa’n’t much of er livin’ ye had, an’ the woman what took keer of ye was only yer stepmother.  Did ye know that?”

“Some of the children told me,” Nancy replied.

“Wal, did any one ever tell ye ’bout yer own mother?”

Nancy stared in round-eyed surprise.

“Why, if she was my stepmother, of course I must have had an own mother once, but I never thought of it.”

“She was a beauty, an’ ye’ll look like her when ye’re a young lady.  Her hair was dark an’ curly, an’ her figger was graceful.  Her big dark eyes was melting, an’ she could dance, oh, how she could dance!”

“My mamma danced?” questioned Nancy.

“She danced like a fairy.  She was a stage dancer; there’s where ye got yer nimble toes, but she died when ye wasn’t a year old, an’ yer father married that other woman who wa’n’t nobody at all.  Yer own ma was called ‘Ma’m’selle Nannette’ on the play-bills, an’ she was a good woman, a sweet woman as ever lived.”

“I wish I’d known her,” Nancy said, her eyes filled with tears at the thought of the beautiful young mother whom she had never known.

“An’ one thing I sent fer yer fer was this,” and Mrs. Ferris took a small box from beneath her shawl.  “What’s in this box belonged ter yer own ma, an’ how Steve got hold of it I don’t know.  I found it ’mong his things, an’ when I see yer ma’s name on to it, I knew he’d no right ter hev it.  I took an’ hid it, an’ Steve tore ‘round like mad a-tellin’ that he’d been robbed, but he didn’t say anything ter the perlice, ’cause he knew it didn’t b’long ter him in the first place.”