“I _did_ like that little blue-eyed Lu,—that’s a fact. I used to think about her all day, and dream about her all night. I wonder where she is now.” “What would you do if you knew?” Annie asked, and Jimmie replied: “I believe I would go miles to see her, just to know what kind of a woman she has developed into. I trust she is not like her aunt. I could not endure her. She struck me as a hard, selfish, ambitious woman, terribly afraid lest the world generally should not think Mrs. Scott Belknap all which Mrs. Scott Belknap thought herself to be.” Annie’s cheeks were very red by this time, and imputing her heightened color to a cause widely different from the real one, Jimmie drew her face down to his, and kissing the burning cheeks, said: “Of course I should take you with me, when I went after little Lu.” “You would hardly find her if you did not,” Annie said, while Jimmie looked inquiringly at her. Annie had only been waiting for Jimmie to speak of the little Pequot, before making her own confession, and she now said to him abruptly: “Did Lulu look any like me?” “Why, yes. I’ve always thought so, only she was younger, and had short hair, you know, and short dresses, too. Annie, Annie, tell me,—was she,—do you,—are you”—Jimmie began, raising himself upright upon the couch, as something in Annie’s expression began to puzzle and mystify him. “Am I what?” Annie asked. “Am I little Lulu of the Pequot House? My name was _Annie Louise Howard_ before I married George. My aunt called me Louise. You never inquired my maiden name, I believe. I suppose you thought I had always been a married woman, but I was a girl of fourteen once, and went with my Aunt Belknap to New London, and met a boy who called himself _Dick Lee_, and who was so kind to the orphan girl, that she began to think of him all day, and watch for his coming after his school hours. He was a saucy, teasing boy, but Lulu liked him, and when one day she waited for his promised coming till it grew dark upon the beach, and the great hotel was lighted up for the evening festivity, and when other days and nights passed, and he neither came nor sent her any word, and she heard at last from one of his comrades that he had gone home to Boston,—I say, when all this came about she began to think that she had loved the boy who deceived her so, for he did deceive her in more points than one, as she afterward learned. His name was not Dick Lee”—— “But, Annie,” Jimmie began, and Annie stopped him, saying: