After a few weeks, Grandma said she must have Ann again; and back she went.  Grandma was very feeble lately, and everybody humored her.  Mrs. Polly was sorry to have the little girl leave her.  She said it was wonderful how much she had improved.  But she would not have admitted that the improvement was owing to the different influence she had been under; she said Ann had outgrown her mischievous ways.

Grandma did not live very long after this however.  Mrs. Polly had her bound girl at her own disposal in a year’s time.  Poor Ann was sorrowful enough for a long while after Grandma’s death.  She wore the beloved gold beads round her neck, and a sad ache in her heart.  The dear old woman had taken the beads off her neck with her own hands and given them to Ann before she died, that there might be no mistake about it.

Mrs. Polly said she was glad Ann had them.  “You might jist as well have ’em as Dorcas’s girl,” said she; “she set enough sight more by you.”

Ann could not help growing cheerful again, after a while.  Affairs in Mrs. Polly’s house were much brighter for her, in some ways, than they had ever been before.

Either the hot iron of affliction had smoothed some of the puckers out of her mistress’ disposition, or she was growing, naturally, less sharp and dictatorial.  Anyway, she was becoming as gentle and loving with Ann as it was in her nature to be, and Ann, following her impulsive temper, returned all the affection with vigor, and never bestowed a thought on past unpleasantness.

For the next two years, Ann’s position in the family grew to be more and more that of a daughter.  If it had not been for the indentures lying serenely in that tall wooden desk, she would almost have forgotten, herself, that she was a bound girl.

One spring afternoon, when Ann was about sixteen years old, her mistress called her solemnly into the fore-room.  “Ann,” said she, “come here, I want to speak to you.”

Nabby stared wonderingly; and Ann, as she obeyed, felt awed.  There was something unusual in her mistress’s tone.

Standing there in the fore-room, in the august company of the best bed, with its high posts and flowered-chintz curtains, the best chest of drawers, and the best chairs, Ann listened to what Mrs. Polly had to tell her.  It was a plan which almost took her breath away; for it was this:  Mrs. Polly proposed to adopt her, and change her name to Wales.  She would be no longer Ann Ginnins, and a bound girl; but Ann Wales, and a daughter in her mother’s home.

Ann dropped into one of the best chairs, and sat there, her little dark face very pale.  “Should I have the—­papers?” she gasped at length.

“Your papers?  Yes, child, you can have them.”

“I don’t want them!” cried Ann, “never.  I want them to stay just where they are, till my time is out.  If I am adopted, I don’t want the papers!”

Mrs. Polly stared.  She had never known how Ann had taken the indentures with her on her run-away trip years ago; but now Ann told her the whole story.  In her gratitude to her mistress, and her contrition, she had to.