“Oh, that’s a very different thing,” said Phil, truly.

But the sweetest incident of Anne’s sojourn in Bolingbroke was the visit to her birthplace—­the little shabby yellow house in an out-of-the-way street she had so often dreamed about.  She looked at it with delighted eyes, as she and Phil turned in at the gate.

“It’s almost exactly as I’ve pictured it,” she said.  “There is no honeysuckle over the windows, but there is a lilac tree by the gate, and—­yes, there are the muslin curtains in the windows.  How glad I am it is still painted yellow.”

A very tall, very thin woman opened the door.

“Yes, the Shirleys lived here twenty years ago,” she said, in answer to Anne’s question.  “They had it rented.  I remember ’em.  They both died of fever at onct.  It was turrible sad.  They left a baby.  I guess it’s dead long ago.  It was a sickly thing.  Old Thomas and his wife took it—­as if they hadn’t enough of their own.”

“It didn’t die,” said Anne, smiling.  “I was that baby.”

“You don’t say so!  Why, you have grown,” exclaimed the woman, as if she were much surprised that Anne was not still a baby.  “Come to look at you, I see the resemblance.  You’re complected like your pa.  He had red hair.  But you favor your ma in your eyes and mouth.  She was a nice little thing.  My darter went to school to her and was nigh crazy about her.  They was buried in the one grave and the School Board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for faithful service.  Will you come in?”

“Will you let me go all over the house?” asked Anne eagerly.

“Laws, yes, you can if you like.  ’Twon’t take you long—­there ain’t much of it.  I keep at my man to build a new kitchen, but he ain’t one of your hustlers.  The parlor’s in there and there’s two rooms upstairs.  Just prowl about yourselves.  I’ve got to see to the baby.  The east room was the one you were born in.  I remember your ma saying she loved to see the sunrise; and I mind hearing that you was born just as the sun was rising and its light on your face was the first thing your ma saw.”

Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room with a full heart.  It was as a shrine to her.  Here her mother had dreamed the exquisite, happy dreams of anticipated motherhood; here that red sunrise light had fallen over them both in the sacred hour of birth; here her mother had died.  Anne looked about her reverently, her eyes with tears.  It was for her one of the jeweled hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory.

“Just to think of it—­mother was younger than I am now when I was born,” she whispered.

When Anne went downstairs the lady of the house met her in the hall.  She held out a dusty little packet tied with faded blue ribbon.

“Here’s a bundle of old letters I found in that closet upstairs when I came here,” she said.  “I dunno what they are—­I never bothered to look in ’em, but the address on the top one is ‘Miss Bertha Willis,’ and that was your ma’s maiden name.  You can take ’em if you’d keer to have ’em.”