Having been assured on that point, she continued: 

“I’m afraid you’ll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we’re in mourning.  That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to me are in mourning I always feel that I’m in mourning, too.  I’m like that.  I never can tell why it is, but—­I’m like that.  My sister-in-law has just lost her sister-in-law.  Of course that’s no relation to me, is it?  And yet I feel as if it was.  I’ve always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and I’ve taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie.  They lived here once.  Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott’s brother and Mr. Jarrott’s partner.  The little girl was born here.  It was a great loss to my brother when Mr. Colfax died.  Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again.  That was a blow, too; so we haven’t been on the same friendly terms of late years.  But now I hope it will be different.  I’m like that.  I always hope.  It’s funny, isn’t it?  No matter what happens, I always think there’s a silver lining to the cloud.  Now, why should I be like that?  Why shouldn’t I despair, like other people?”

Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous temperament.

“Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!” screamed the parrot ending in a croaking laugh.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Miss Jarrott mused.  “Everybody is different, don’t you think?  And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so different as I am.  I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I’ve been justified.  We’re going to have our little girl again.  She’s coming to make us a long, long visit.  Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here we hope she’ll stay.  Who knows?  There may be something to keep her here.  You never can tell about that.  She’s an orphan, with no one in the world but a stepfather, and he’s blind.  So who has a better right to her?  I always think that people who have a right to other people should have them, don’t you?  Besides, he’s going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors.  She’s nearly eighteen now, and she wasn’t eight when she left us.  Oh yes, of course we’ve seen her since then—­when we’ve gone to New York—­but that hasn’t been often.  She will have changed; she’ll have her hair up, and be wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her.  Oh, you couldn’t deceive me.  I never forget a face.  I’m like that.  No, nor names either.  I should remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now.  I noticed you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott.  So did my sister-in-law, but I noticed you first.  We’ve often spoken of you, especially after we knew your name was Strange.  It seemed to us so strange.  That’s a pun, isn’t it?  I often make them.  We both thought you were like what Henry—­that’s Mr. Jarrott’s oldest son—­might have grown to, if he had been spared to us.  We’ve had a great deal of sorrow—­Oh, a great