To think that they had, though unwittingly, hurt and estranged the child like this, was Mrs. Fleming’s first thought; and the tears came to her eyes, and her voice broke as she cried impulsively, “Oh, my little girl, my little girl!”

Ally started at the sight of these tears, at the sound of this tenderly breaking voice.  And there was Uncle John; and he was crying too, and his voice was breaking as he said something.  What was it he was saying?—­that it was not forgetfulness, it was not neglect of her, that had made him fail to meet her at the station, but an untoward accident to the streetcar he was in that had delayed him.  And what was that Aunt Kate was saying?  That they did care for her, that they did want her, and that they had set the telegraphic wires all over the country to hunt for her and bring her back to them.

“But—­but—­Florence told me,” faltered Ally, “that you dreaded the winter on my account,—­I was so—­so bad-tempered—­so hard to live with.”

“Dreaded the winter on your account!  Florence told you I said that?” cried Mrs. Fleming, in amazement.

“She said she heard you say it to her mother.”

A light broke over Mrs. Fleming’s face.  “Oh, I remember now perfectly.  It was just after you were so ill with that bad throat, and I was speaking to your aunt Ann about it, and I said to her, ’I dread the winter on Ally’s account.’  How could—­how could Florence put such a mischievous meaning to my words?”

“Perhaps she only heard just those words,” replied Ally, who would never take advantage of anybody.

“But why should she want to tell you what would hurt you like that?”

“We’d been quarrelling,” answered Ally, with an honest brevity that was very edifying.

“But, as you see now it was for your bad throat, and not for your bad temper, that I dreaded the winter,” said Aunt Kate, with a smile, “you will come back with us, and let us both try again.  We meant to be good to you, dear; but we did not think enough that you had been unused to a big family,—­that you were a little ewe lamb that had been transplanted into a great crowded fold, and left to find your place with the crowd; and you misunderstood this, and took us too hardly; but we’re going to do better.  We’re going to be more thoughtful of one another, and you’ll come home with us now, and we’ll have our Thanksgiving dinner together, won’t we?”

Childish and ignorant of the world’s ways, as her wild idea in regard to her right to a place in an orphans’ home proved her, Ally had a great deal of sense in other directions, and she began to perceive that she had not been the wilfully neglected and abused person she had thought herself, and to think, too, that perhaps Aunt Kate might have had something to bear from her.  At any rate, her good sense made her see that her aunt had come to her with kind and generous intentions, and