Honora seemed quite content in the arms of Aunt Mary, who was gazing so earnestly into the child’s face that she did not at first hear Mrs. Holt’s invitation to take breakfast with them on Madison Avenue, and then she declined politely.  While grossing on the steamer, Mrs. Holt had decided quite clearly in her mind just what she was going to say to the child’s future guardian, but there was something in Aunt Mary’s voice and manner which made these remarks seem unnecessary—­although Mrs. Holt was secretly disappointed not to deliver them.

“It was fortunate that we happened to, be in Nice at the time,” she said with the evident feeling that some explanation was due.  “I did not know poor Mrs. Randolph Leffingwell very—­very intimately, or Mr. Leffingwell.  It was such a sudden—­such a terrible affair.  But Mr. Holt and I were only too glad to do what we could.”

“We feel very grateful to you,” said Aunt Mary, quietly.

Mrs. Holt looked at her with a still more distinct approval, being tolerably sure that Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell understood.  She had cleared her skirts of any possible implication of intimacy with the late Mrs. Randolph, and done so with a master touch.

In the meantime Honora had passed to Uncle Tom.  After securing the little trunk, and settling certain matters with Mr. Holt, they said good-by to her late kind protectors, and started off for the nearest street-cars, Honora pulling Uncle Tom’s mustache.  More than one pedestrian paused to look back at the tall man carrying the beautiful child, bedecked like a young princess, and more than one passenger in the street cars smiled at them both.

CHAPTER II

PERDITA RECALLED

Saint Louis, or that part of it which is called by dealers in real estate the choice residence section, grew westward.  And Uncle Tom might be said to have been in the vanguard of the movement.  In the days before Honora was born he had built his little house on what had been a farm on the Olive Street Road, at the crest of the second ridge from the river.  Up this ridge, with clanking traces, toiled the horse-cars that carried Uncle Tom downtown to the bank and Aunt Mary to market.

Fleeing westward, likewise, from the smoke, friends of Uncle Tom’s and Aunt Mary’s gradually surrounded them—­building, as a rule, the high Victorian mansions in favour at that period, which were placed in the centre of commodious yards.  For the friends of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary were for the most part rich, and belonged, as did they, to the older families of the city.  Mr. Dwyer’s house, with its picture gallery, was across the street.