During the last ten minutes Margery’s thoughts had been traveling back over the past to the early days of her childhood, when her home was on the upper floor of a high dwelling in the Rue St. Honore, where her days were passed in loneliness, except for the companionship of a cat and her playthings, of which she had a great abundance. Her parents were poor, and her mother was busy all day at a hair-dresser’s, going out early and coming home late, while her father worked she did not know where, and sometimes it entered her little active brain that perhaps he did not work at all, for on the days when she went to walk, as she occasionally did, with the woman who had the floor below, and who looked after and was kind to the lonely little girl in the attic, she often saw him lounging and drinking at a third-class cafe which they passed when her friend, Lisette Vertueil, had clothes to carry to her patrons, for Lisette was a laundress, and washed for many of the upper class. Sometimes, too, Margery heard her mother reproach her father for his indolence and thriftlessness, and then there was always a quarrel, into which her name was dragged, though in what way she could not tell. She only knew that after these quarrels her mother was, if possible, kinder to her than before—and said her prayers oftener in a little closet off from the living room. Her father, too, was kind to her in his rough, off-hand way, but she did not love him as she did her pretty mother, and when at last he died, her grief for him though violent at first was very short-lived and soon forgotten, as the griefs of children are. Among the patrons of Lisette Vertueil was Mr. Hetherton, the reputed millionaire, whose elegant carriage and horses sometimes stood on the St. Honore while his housekeeper talked to Lisette of the garments she had brought to be washed for her little mistress, Miss Reinette—garments dainty enough for a princess to wear, and which Lisette took great pride in showing to her neighbors, as a kind of advertisement for herself. One morning when Margery was spending an hour or two with the laundress, helping to fold the clothes preparatory to being sent home, Lisette had shown her the lovely embroidered dresses, and told her of the little black-eyed girl who occasionally came there with her maid, and seemed so much like a playful kitten, in her quick, varying moods. “Oh, how I wish I was rich like her, and had such lovely dresses, and how I’d like to see her! Do you think she’d come up to our room, if you asked her?” Margery said, and Lisette replied that she did not know but would try what she could do. Accordingly, the next time Reinette came to the laundry, in her scarlet hood and cloak, trimmed with white ermine and lined with quilted satin, Lisette told her of the little girl who lived on the floor above, and who was alone all day, with only her doll and cat to talk to, and who would like to see her.