“About that time mother went off with cholera, and then I told Mrs. Westbrooke about my baby, and asked if I might bring it and show it to her. You don’t know how pretty she was, with her golden-red hair curling all over her head, and her sweet blue eyes. My lady got very fond of her the three days she stayed with me, and, when I spoke of carrying it away, she said: “‘I do not believe I can let baby go. It seems like my own lost darling. Will you let me have her?’ “‘For your own?’ I said, and she answered: “‘Yes, for my own.’ “This was just what suited me,—to see my pet grow up a lady,—and I told her yes, and as the master did not oppose it more than to say ‘that he did not care especially for other people’s brats, and this one must be kept out of his way,’ it was settled that baby should stay, and I do believe my mistress came to love it like her own. She gave it her lost baby’s name, and had it christened ‘Gertrude Heloise Westbrooke,’ so it sure would have a name. She was a sweet-tempered lady, but weak and nervous like. I think she had consumption, for nothing in particular appeared to ail her, only she was tired like all the time, and never could sleep nor get rested, and at last she died, and left an annuity of forty pounds a year to little Gertie, and said I was to have the care of her. “About a year after her death the master married a fashionable, fussy little woman from Glasgow, who disliked children worse than he did, and never noticed Gertie in any way after she found out that she was not Mr. Westbrooke’s own. I was about to be married myself, and asked the master if I might have the child. He was more than willing, and so I took her to my own comfortable home on the second floor of a house in what is now Abingdon Road, but was then Newland Street. All this time I had not been able to track you, though I never went out that I did not look for you; and many’s the time I drew my little girl to the gardens of Kensington and even to Hyde Park, where I sat by the hour watching the people as they went by in hopes of seeing you. But I never did, and I had almost given it up, when one day in October I went into a linendraper’s on High Street to get a new slip for my darling. The girls were all very busy, and I had to wait a bit, and was looking at the dresses in the window when I heard some one say, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ and looking up I saw you coming in. I knew you in a moment, though you was handsomer than ever, and looking well and strong. In my excitement I forgot what I had come to get, but stood watching you, my heart beating so loud I was afraid you might hear it.