, that first day,
that you were aunt and niece--"

"People do, I think," Margaret said thoughtfully, "because we're both
fair." She did not say that but for Mrs. Carr-Bolt's invaluable maid
the likeness would have been less marked, on this score at least. "I
taught school," she went on simply, "and Mrs. Carr-Bolt happened to
come to my school, and she asked me to come to her."

"You're all alone in the world, Miss Page?" He was eyeing her
amusingly; the direct question came quite naturally.

"Oh, dear me, no! My father and mother are living"; and feeling, as
she always did, a little claim on her loyalty, she added: "We are, or
were, rather, Southern people,--but my father settled in a very small
New York town--"

"Mrs. Carr-Bolt told me that--I'd forgotten--" said Professor
Tenison, and he carried the matter entirely out of Margaret's
hands,--much, much further indeed than she would have carried it,
by continuing, "She tells me that Quincyport was named for your
mother's grandfather, and that Judge Paget was your father's father."

"Father's uncle," Margaret corrected, although as a matter of fact
Judge Paget had been no nearer than her father's second cousin.
"But father always called him uncle," Margaret assured herself
inwardly. To the Quincy-port claim she said nothing. Quincyport
was in the county that Mother's people had come from; Quincy was
a very unusual name, and the original Quincy had been a Charles,
which certainly was one of Mother's family names. Margaret and
Julie, browsing about among the colonial histories and genealogies
of the Weston Public Library years before, had come to a jubilant
certainty that mother's grandfather must have been the same man.
But she did not feel quite so positive now.

"Your people aren't still in the South, you said?"

"Oh, no!" Margaret cleared her throat. "They're in Weston--Weston,
New York."

"Weston! Not near Dayton?"

"Why, yes! Do you know Dayton?"

"Do I know Dayton?" He was like an eager child. "Why, my Aunt Pamela
lives there; the only mother I ever knew! I knew Weston, too, a
little. Lovely homes there, some of them,--old colonial houses. And
your mother lives there? Is she fond of flowers?"

"She loves them," Margaret said, vaguely uncomfortable.

"Well, she must know Aunt Pamela," said John Tenison,
enthusiastically. "I expect they'd be great friends. And you must know
Aunt Pam. She's like a dainty old piece of china, or a--I don't know,
a tea ro