“Sent that old red cloak she’s had ever since she was knee high!  I shouldn’t s’pose there’d be a rag of it left!  She must be crazy as a loon to-day,” was Mrs. Biggs’s comment, when Sarah told her errand.  “What possessed her?”

Sarah only knew that her mistress was more dazed than usual that morning, and had insisted upon her bringing the cloak.

“I think it rattled her when the chairs came back.  She didn’t know anything about ’em, nor the Colonel either,” Sarah said.

Mrs. Biggs laughed, and replied, “I didn’t s’pose they did.  Them young men, I b’lieve, was at the bottom of it, and I or’to have told Miss Smith to send her thanks to them, but I wasn’t quite sure about the sea chair.  So I let it slide, thinkin’ it was a good joke on ’em to thank Amy.  They pretended the things was from her.”

Taking the cloak from the girl, she carried it into the room where Eloise had fallen asleep, with her foot resting upon a hassock, and a shawl thrown over it.  Removing the shawl and putting the red cloak in its place, Mrs. Biggs stole noiselessly out, saying to herself, “I guess she’ll wonder where that came from when she wakes up.”

CHAPTER III

ELOISE AT THE CROMPTON HOUSE

For an hour or more Eloise slept on, and then awoke suddenly and saw the scarlet cloak across her foot.  At first it was the color which attracted her.  Then taking it in her hands she began to examine it, while drops of sweat came out upon her forehead and under her hair.  She knew that cloak!  She had worn it many and many a time when she was a child.  She had seen her mother fold and pack it far more carefully, when they were starting on a starring tour, than she did the fine dresses she wore on the stage.

“It is my mother’s, but how came it here?” she thought, as she took it into the kitchen where she heard Mrs. Biggs at her work.  “Where did you get my mother’s cloak?” she asked.

Mrs. Biggs, who always washed on Saturdays, had just put Tim’s shirt through the wringer.  Holding it at arm’s length with one hand and steadying herself on the side of the tub with the other, she stared blankly at Eloise for a moment, and then said, “Your mother’s cloak!  Child alive, that’s Mrs. Amy’s.  I’ve seen her wear it a hundred times when she was a little girl.  She has got on a spell of givin’ this mornin’, and sent it to you by Sarah.  She’s kep’ it well all these years.  What ails you?” she continued, as Eloise’s face grew as white as the clothes in Mrs. Biggs’s basket.

Ray after ray of light was penetrating her mind, making her wonder she had not seen it before, and bringing a possibility which made her brain reel for a moment.

“Sit down,” Mrs. Biggs continued, “and tell me why you think this is your mother’s cloak.”

“I know it is,” Eloise answered.  “I have worn it so many times, and once I tore a long rent in the lining and mother darned it.  It is here,—­see!”