“Yes, Grey was right.  Why didn’t I take the little thing in my arms and bring her home with me?  To think of her being hungry, when there is enough wasted in this house every day to feed her!  And why did I so far forget myself as to talk as I did to-day—­I, who am usually so silent with regard to my affairs!  Why need I have told them that Archie’s wife was a trollop.  I suppose the venom is still rankling in me for the name she called me, ‘Old Sour Krout!’” and Miss Betsey smiled grimly as she remembered all, the child upon the terrace had said to her that summer morning three years ago, “She is truthful, at all events,” she continued, “and I like that, and wish I had her here.  She would be a comfort to me, now that I am old, and the house has no young life in it, except my cats.  There’s the bedroom at the end of the hall, opening from my room.  She could have that, and I should be so happy fitting it up for her.  I’d trim it with blue, and have hangings at the bed, and—­”

Here she stopped, seized with a sudden inspiration, and summoning the housemaid, Flora, to her, she said: 

“Remove the tea things and bring my writing-desk.”

Flora obeyed, and her mistress was soon deep in the construction of a letter to Archibald McPherson, to whom she made the proposition that he should bring his daughter Betsey to her, or if he did not care to cross the ocean himself, that he place her under the charge of some reliable person who was coming to America and who would see her safely to Allington, or, that failing, she did not know but she would come herself for the child, so anxious was she to have her.

“I shall not try to conceal from you that I have seen her.  You know that by the result.  I did see her on the terrace, and saw your wife, too, and I liked the child, and want her for my own, to train as I please and to bring up to some useful occupation, so that, if necessary, she can earn her own living.  There has been too much false pride in our family on account of birth and blood.  The idea that because you are born a gentleman or lady you must not work is absurd.  Would it not be more honorable to sweep the streets, or scour knives and pare potatoes, than to sponge one’s living out of strangers who despise you in then hearts even when inviting you to their houses?  We have men, and women too, in America who do not work but get their living from others, and we call them tramps, and have them arrested as vagrants.  But that is neither here nor there.  I want you to give little Betsey to me, and she, at least, will never regret it.  But don’t let me hope of a fortune influence you, for my will was made years ago, and not a McPherson is remembered in it.  Still, if Betsey pleases me, I may add a codicil and give her a few thousands, but don’t count upon it, or my death either.  We are a long-lived race, and I am perfectly strong and well; so, if you let me have her, do it because you think it will