must be," said
Agatha, "that someone made you that Pair of Clogs."

This was only one of many and many a conversation amongst the children
on the same subject during several following weeks. And what a
wonderful subject it was! Surely never had such a strange thing
happened in a quiet village as this discovery of Mary's mother, and as
to Mary herself, she was now surrounded by an air of romance which was
more interesting than any story-book. If she could only have remembered
a little about that time she passed with the gypsies! But none of
Jackie's earnest appeals to "try hard" produced any results, for all
that part of her life was wiped as clean out of her memory as when one
washes marks off a slate with a sponge. It was all gone, and when she
looked back it was not Seraminta and Perrin and the donkey-cart she saw,
but the kind faces of Mr and Mrs Vallance and her happy, pleasant home
at the vicarage. And yet, though her earliest recollections were of
these, she did not in truth belong to them; they were not her people,
and sunny Wensdale was not her place; Maggie was her mother, and cold,
grey Haworth on the hillside was her real home. It was, as Jackie had
said, a most puzzling thing, and the important question arose--would
Mary have to go away? It was wildly irritating to be shut out from all
the talks and conferences which were always going on now between Mary's
two mothers and Mrs Chelwood. The children felt that it was more their
concern than anyone's, but they were told nothing, and the air of the
school-room was so full of excitement and curiosity that Fraulein was in
despair. The slightest noises in the house during lesson time now
seemed to carry deep meaning--perhaps only a bell ringing, or some one
shutting the door of mother's sitting-room, but it was enough to make
Jackie put down his slate-pencil and look at Mary with an awestruck and
impressive gaze. She would give an answering nod of intelligence, and
Patrick and Jennie, not to be left out in the cold, would at once begin
to nod rapidly at each other, as much as to say, "We understand too."
It was only Agatha who took her placid way undisturbed. But the day
came when, matters being at last arranged, the children were told all
about it, and this is what they heard:

Mary was to spend a year with her real mother at Haworth, and a year
with Mrs Vallance at Wensdale, alternately, until she was eighteen
years old. On her eighteenth birthday s