't, dear; but I thought you knew. When Uncle John
came in that afternoon I asked him if he had seen you in the last two
days, and he said 'no,' and then 'yes.' I asked him if he had told you
about what had happened to me, and he declared that he couldn't
remember. I was sure that he had told you, because he often says that
when he is afraid father or I won't approve of something he has done.
That is the reason I didn't come to see you. Then I went to New York in
a hurry without dreaming of what your letter really meant. Jerry wrote
me two days before I had planned to come home. So I changed my plans and
started for Sanford the same day her letter reached me. Charlie was so
much better that I wasn't needed."

"Charlie?" repeated Marjorie, in bewildered interrogation.

"Yes," nodded Constance. "Haven't you seen father since I left? Didn't
he tell you?"

"Only once. I--he--I didn't let him know about us. It was right after
you went away. He said you had taken Charlie with you. I met him in the
street and stopped only a minute. I had come from your house that day
but there was no one at home. I couldn't bear to let things go on as
they had.

"Now," declared Marjorie, drawing a long breath, "begin at the beginning
and tell me every single thing."

"I will," assured Constance, emphatically. "Let me see. It began the day
after Christmas. A letter came from New York in the morning mail
addressed to father. I gave it to him, and after he read it he sat so
still and looked so white that I thought he was going to faint. Then he
made me come and sit down beside him and told me that the letter was
from my mother's sister in New York and that she was rich and wanted me
to come and live with her.

"I said that I would never desert my own father no matter how poor he
was, and then he told me that he was only my foster father, just as he
was Charlie's. That my own father had been his best friend when they
were boys. Later on, my father became a worthless, drunken wretch and my
mother had to do sewing to take care of herself and me. My mother's
family never forgave her for marrying my father and would not help her.
She was not strong and could not stand it to be so poor and work so
hard. She died when I was a year old, and just a month afterward my
father died with pneumonia. No one wanted me, so I was put in an orphan
asylum, but Father Stevens, who had been trying to find my father, heard
where I was and took me to live with him