uld know her again, though all this time the child was growing up,
and was a baby no longer. But the mother never quite despaired, and she
had a feeling that somehow the little clog would help her in her search:
on its wooden sole, as well as on that of the lost one, she had
scratched two letters--BM.

"So the time went on and on. It was seven long years after she had lost
her child that the mother heard of a situation in a place called
Wensdale, and went there to live. Now you can tell me the mother's
name."

"Why, of course, it must be Maggie," said Jackie, who had been staring
fixedly at Mary for the last two minutes with his mouth wide open; "and
that's why she caught hold of my shoe and--"

"Let me finish the story," said Mrs Chelwood, "and then you shall talk
about it as much as you like. In this very place there was a little
girl living at the vicarage who had been left in the garden there by
gypsies seven years ago. She had a funny little shoe with her when she
was found, and had kept it ever since; and now, perhaps, you know who
that little girl is."

"It's me!" cried Mary, starting up--"it's my shoe--and I saw the
letters--and I don't belong to the gypsies after all, and--"

"My dear," said the squire, putting his head in at the door, "I'm too
muddy to come in, but you'll all be glad to hear that we've caught those
rascals and they're all in Dorminster jail."

Mrs Chelwood hurried out of the room, and the children all began to
talk at once, to ask questions, to exclaim, to wonder if the gypsies
would be hanged, and so on. Presently, however, it was found that Mary
had strange and dreadful experiences to relate. A silence fell upon the
others until she had finished, and then they looked at her with a sort
of awe.

"So our chickens won't be stolen," she repeated, "and that dreadful
Seraminta can't take me away."

"It's a tremendously puzzling thing though," said Jackie reflectively;
"here you've got two mothers, you see, and two names. How will you
manage, and where will you live?"

"She's only got one _real_ mother," cried Patrick.

"And one _real_ name," said Jennie.

"And shall you mind," continued Jackie seriously, "about not being
grand? You're not Lady anything, you see, but just `Betty.'"

"I don't want to be grand any more," said Mary earnestly, "and I don't
mind anything else one bit, now I don't belong to the gypsies."

"How glad your last mother--no, I mean your first mother--