“Yours, very truly,

“J.P.  ALLING, M.D.”

It was Ruby who brought the letter one evening two or three days before Eloise expected to make her first appearance in school.  Mrs. Biggs and Tim were out and Eloise was alone.  Tearing open the envelope, she read it quickly, and then with the bitterest cry Ruby had ever heard, covered her face with her hands and sobbed:  “My mother!  Oh, my mother!”

“Is she dead?” Ruby asked, and Eloise replied, “Worse than that, perhaps.  I don’t know where she is.  Read what it says.”

She gave the letter to Ruby, who read it twice; then, sitting down by Eloise and passing her arm around her, she said, “I don’t understand what it means.  Was your mother in a lunatic asylum?”

“Oh, don’t call it that!” Eloise answered.  “It was a private asylum in San Francisco,—­very private and select, father said, but I never quite believed her crazy.  She was always quiet and sad and peculiar, and hated the business, and so did I.”

“What was the business?” Ruby asked, and Eloise answered hesitatingly, as if it were something of which to be ashamed, “She sang in public with a troupe,—­his troupe.  He made her.  She was the star and drew big houses, she was so beautiful and sang so sweetly, without any apparent effort.  It was just like a bird, and when she sang the Southern melodies she seemed to be in a trance, seeing things we could not see.  It made me cry to hear her.  I know many good women are public singers, but mother shrank from it, and when they cheered like mad there used to be a frightened look in her eyes, as if she wondered why they were doing it and wanted to hide, and when she got to our rooms she’d tremble and be so cold and cry, while father sometimes scolded and sometimes laughed at her.  He tried to make me sing once.  I have a fair voice, but I rebelled and said I’d run away before I’d do it.  He was very angry, and sent me North to my grandmother, saying I was too great an expense to keep with him unless I would help, and was a hindrance to my mother, who was always so anxious about me.  It nearly killed her to part with me.  I was all the comfort she had, she said, and she always called me Baby.  Father was not kind to her, and it seemed as if he hated me, and was jealous of mother’s love for me.  When I heard he was dead, I could not feel badly, as I ought, and did not cry.  He was a very handsome man, and very nice with people, who thought my mother a most fortunate woman to have so polished and courteous a husband.  They should have seen him as I saw him at times, and heard him swear, as I have heard him, and call her names till she was white as a corpse and fainted.  I never saw her turn upon him but once.  I had asked her why she didn’t leave him and go home, if she had any to go to.  That was when I was a little girl.

“‘I have no home or friends in all the wide world to go to’ she said, and then, with a sneer which was maddening, it meant so much, my father said, ‘Ask her who her father was and see if she can tell you.’