wo familiar taciturn old presences,
while he rummaged in the depths of a bag stuffed with strips of
newspaper.

He found Mrs. Heeny sitting in a pink arm-chair, her bonnet perched on a
pink-shaded electric lamp and her numerous implements spread out on an
immense pink toilet-table. Vague as his recollection of her was, she
gave him at once a sense of reassurance that nothing else in the house
conveyed, and after he had examined all her scissors and pastes and
nail-polishers he turned to the bag, which stood on the carpet at her
feet as if she were waiting for a train.

"My, my!" she said, "do you want to get into that again? How you used to
hunt in it for taffy, to be sure, when your Pa brought you up to Grandma
Spragg's o' Saturdays! Well, I'm afraid there ain't any taffy in it now;
but there's piles and piles of lovely new clippings you ain't seen."

"My Papa?" He paused, his hand among the strips of newspaper. "My Papa
never saw my Grandma Spragg. He never went to America."

"Never went to America? Your Pa never--? Why, land alive!" Mrs. Heeny
gasped, a blush empurpling her large warm face. "Why, Paul Marvell,
don't you remember your own father, you that bear his name?" she
exclaimed.

The boy blushed also, conscious that it must have been wrong to forget,
and yet not seeing how he was to blame.

"That one died a long long time ago, didn't he? I was thinking of my
French father," he explained.

"Oh, mercy," ejaculated Mrs. Heeny; and as if to cut the conversation
short she stooped over, creaking like a ship, and thrust her plump
strong hand into the bag.

"Here, now, just you look at these clippings--I guess you'll find a lot
in them about your Ma.--Where do they come from? Why, out of the papers,
of course," she added, in response to Paul's enquiry. "You'd oughter
start a scrap-book yourself--you're plenty old enough. You could make
a beauty just about your Ma, with her picture pasted in the front--and
another about Mr. Moffatt and his collections. There's one I cut out the
other day that says he's the greatest collector in America."

Paul listened, fascinated. He had the feeling that Mrs. Heeny's
clippings, aside from their great intrinsic interest, might furnish him
the clue to many things he didn't understand, and that nobody had ever
had time to explain to him. His mother's marriages, for instance: he was
sure there was a great deal to find out about them. But she always said:
"I'll tell you all about